Maria Islands
Since the start of global waste trade in the 70’s, we can track streams of waste from Western countries towards Southeast Asian countries, where waste accumulates as a result of global export deals and the waste management industry. Involuntarily, marine debris also gathers via gyres, such as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world’s largest collection of ocean plastic in the North Pacific Ocean. These waste streams are leaving their marks. Human waste has already seeped into geological layers as we can find plastic materials fused into natural sediments as plastiglomerates. Meanwhile, ecologies are learning to adapt to these new artificial islands floating in the ocean as neopelagic communities are traveling the waters towards new land.
‘Maria Islands’ is a fictional archipelago made of plastic debris and a narrative framework project in collaboration with Filipino artist Bianca Carague. The future archipelago is shaped by collective imagination on what a new understanding of sensemaking and co-existence can look like, one that unifies technological, ecological and spiritual knowledge. How might people co- exist with other species and materials in this new reality? What rituals, cultures and technologies can emerge?
The shifting exhibition format looks into the possible influence of waste colonialism on spiritual connections and other links through a fictional techno-deity named Maria, tasked to care for an imagined island and to bring life to the new species formed after a supposed archipelagic evolution. Through this open framework, Carague and Peters invite different artists to co-imagine Maria Islands together through a scriptual introduction and continuous dialogue, exploring how a shared reality can be imagined together.
Chapter 1: Prelude
‘Maria Islands’ by Bianca Carague and Erik Peters, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2023
Chapter 2: Co-habitation
‘Maria Islands’ by Bianca Carague and Erik Peters with Celine Lee, Is Jumalon, Luis Antonio Santos and Miguel Lorenzo Uy. Curated by Stephanie Frondoso
Chapter 3: Emergence
‘Plastic Tides’ by Bianca Carague and Erik Peters, Mono8 Gallery, Manila, 2024
