Material Flows

‘We have to follow the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories’ (Appadurai, 1986, p.5).

Material Flows is an exhibition mapping the lifecycle of plastics and associated raw materials, exploring their intricate connections to global systems of extraction, trade, and waste. At the centre lies the colonial legacy of resource extraction by companies such as the Dutch East India Company. This has left a lasting impact: the same resources that fuelled colonial economies now drive plastic production, only for the resulting waste to often return to Indonesia and other former colonies.

Image, Ben Parry, Plastic Sorting line, 13 Compounds, Dharavi, Mumbai (2020)

By tracing these material flows, the exhibition reveals the entangled histories and toxic burdens carried by landscapes and communities across the global South. Material Flows unfolds through objects, installations, film, multimedia and data-driven art works that confront audiences with the cumulative impacts of plastic’s life cycle, making visible the ecological and social debts accrued along the way.