Plastic Ocean by Thirza Schaap

The intention of "Plastic Ocean" is to create awareness around pollution and to try to prevent the use of plastic. Walking on the beach, Schaap finds plastic that has washed ashore and once at home transforms it into beautiful sculptures. By photographing these sculptures, she tries to evoke an emotional response from the public by creating a contradiction. A clash between the initial aesthetic appeal and after a second look: repulsion and the realization of the tragedy that waste causes.

Read the interview about the creation of "Plastic Ocean".

Read the interview about book publishing with Thirza Schaap here.

About the artist: Thirza Schaap

Thirza Schaap (b. 1971, The Netherlands) is a Dutch photographer graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 1995. After posting the images from the project "Plastic Ocean" on her social media channels in the summer of 2017, she was published at I-D VICE magazine, followed by the publications like Lidewij Edelkoorts’s Trend Tablet, L’Officiel, Elle, Vogue, Aperture to name only a few. Her collection was included in the Finders Keepers exhibition at the Het Nieuwe Instituut, a design museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

In her project "Plastic Ocean", Schaap shifts our perceptions of the value of trash and draws attention to the pollution problem on our planet. Thirza Schaap spends half of the year in Cape Town, South Africa, the place where she creates unique artworks from garbage she finds on the local beaches.

Plastic Ocean by Thirza Schaap

About the artist: Thirza Schaap

Read the interview with Thirza Schaap here