These thought-provoking photographs of an installation will make you go plastic-free

By Maha Hassan Last updated May 6, 2019

If you are one of those people who think art serves no greater purpose except for making spaces look pretty then photographer turned social impact artist, Benjamin Von Wong’s latest project Plastikophobia will compel you to think otherwise. Von Wong wished to create awareness regarding one-time use plastic cups in a way that would not look too intimidating to the passersby at first but leave them with an after-thought that they would find hard to forget. For this purpose, Von Wong went on with his volunteers to gather 18000 cups in just two days and then collaborated with a local Singaporean fabricator Joshua Goh to build up a selfie-worthy crystal cave installation using just plastic cups and LED lights.

The cave shines like a crystal and lures the spectators to come in and take a selfie however, once they get in they realize that the installation is made up entirely of thrown plastic cups hence the alarming situation of plastic pollution dawns on them and encourage them to act responsibly from then on. Von Wong also documented this concept by bringing onboard the contemporary dancer Jialin Neo, who dressed up as an underwater diver and used Broncolor Balloon Lamp as a prop to create thought-provoking images. “[We decided to] invert the image to create the illusion of a swimmer inside of an ocean filled with plastics.”