Thirza Schaap is an artist based between Cape Town, South Africa, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Combining sculpture with photography, her ongoing project, “Plastic Ocean,” examines our changing relationship with plastics and their increasing and overwhelming presence in our lives.

Juxtaposing the ugliness of pollution with aesthetically pleasing sculptural compositions, Schaap forces us to consider the implications of our consumption, idolatry, and values. “Plastic Ocean provides a kind of Vanitas for the 21st century,” she explains. “Traditional icons of mortality, ephemerality and wealth have been traded out for bottles, baskets and bowls: single-use items which are used and discarded, now only existing as empty vessels of destruction. Our beaches are covered in plastic confetti and there really is nothing to celebrate.”

Thirza Schaap is represented by Bildhalle Zurich + Amsterdam.

See more from “Plastic Ocean” below!