Discarded

Discarded. Bas-relief sculpture comprised of plaster elements that are hand-cast from discarded plastic packaging.

As a product designer, Salonen thinks about her role in designing new products, and about the waste in product packaging. This project seeks to open up a dialog on the over-consumption of product packaging and plastic waste. Just google it: Packaging accounts for 40% of all plastic produced, used once and discarded. Plastics in the ocean will outweigh fish by 2050. Less than a fifth of all plastic is recycled globally.

Salonen’s hand-cast, bas-relief sculptures, titled “Discarded,” question the narrative of disposable packaging as end-of-life waste.
A visualization of waste as beauty.

Salonen’s hand-cast, bas-relief sculptures, titled “Discarded,” question the narrative of disposable packaging as end-of-life waste. They are created from packaging components that encase everyday objects and are themselves designed, only to be thrown away. By re-materializing ubiquitous, single-use packaging into art, Salonen disrupts the waste stream. Her meticulous process creates a paradoxical new object, where the throw-away is reincarnated as an object of desire. From low to high end, it’s a visualization of waste as beauty.

This is a limited edition of unique artworks. Custom commissions available.

ABOUT THE PROCESS

The casting process for creating the bas-relief sculptures of the Discarded series starts with disposable food packages that are repurposed and used as moulds. Working against “throwawayism,” plaster is poured into the moulds, dried, sanded, painted, arranged into a composition, mounted onto a substrate and framed. The Discarded series is made with the utmost attention to craft and finishing.

This process takes something that is perceived as waste through multiple elaborate steps to produce something lasting, working against throwawayism.

These sculptures offer a memory, a trace of the object, ghost forms from a previous life. Packaging inside-out.
Traces of everyday objects. Uncovering something extraordinary out of the ordinary.