A large scale multi media installation by Maggie Nowinski
Maggie Nowinski: Artist Statement
Plastic water bottles exist in the daily periphery of our environments, like the tap, tap, tapping of a leaking faucet, the ticking of a clock counting down to a dangerous event. As they assimilate into the corners of our environments, we swallow the methods of the bottled water industry that manufacture and advertise their contents using notions of purity and health.
Obsessed by an awareness of plastic water bottles I started collecting and working with them. Since late 2007 I have been developing a project that explores my relationship with the plastic water phenomenon. Looking at my own discomfort about participating in the world I live in, physically and psychologically, as I continually adjust to the sensation of impending doom that comes from living in today’s world, I explore the internalization of anxiety, the absorption of customary practices as normal and the impact of social and commercial processes on the individual. When I drink bottled water, the process is paradoxical – rejuvenating yet emotionally numbing. Swallowed will culminate in an installation including hundreds of photographs, thousands of plastic water bottles, video projects, audio recordings and drawings.
When we drink water we experience a somatic moment at the site where the external and internal meet – a primitive experience of a basic need being met. Plastic bottling has invaded this moment. We drink plastic water, part of a system that extends beyond the simple and immediate practice of drinking water. The residue of this process leaves internal traces in the body as it passes through our bodies – evidenced in the quenching of thirst, urinating and sweating.
When:
Wednesday, January 21 – Monday, February 23
