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Local studio Bolsón has refabricated low-density plastic used in banana production to create interior cladding and furniture for Mooni in Mexico City during the city’s art week.
Called Banana Blue, the installation was made from low-density blue plastic used for protecting banana crops at a plantation in Jalisco owned by the family of the wife of Bolsón’s founder, Noberto Miranda, as well as local urban waste.
Miranda gathered the plastic and used a heat gun and body pressure to turn the plastic into cladding for Mooni, an art gallery and boutique shop in the city’s Condesa neighbourhood.
Miranda told Dezeen that the project seeks to both reuse the material that was often thrown away and to constitute a “manual” relationship with working with plastic, as seen in his use of body weight and hand fabrication to create the material.
Banana Blue was used for the cladding of the facade as well as parts of the shop’s interior.
“Seeking to reassign meaning to this waste and propose a different relationship with this omnipresent but often misunderstood and discarded material, Bolsón transforms the useless into pieces of art and utilitarian objects of aesthetic value, with the prevalence of the color blue,” said Mooni.
“Banana Blue is a dialogue between nature, art, and sustainability.”
In addition to the cladding material, several small stools made from compressed plastic developed by Miranda were showcased alongside the fine art usually displayed in Mooni.
Miranda told Dezeen that plastic is usually created in labs, by specialists, and that’s why the material looks so “alien”.
However, he hopes that showing the aesthetic potential for the work in fine art environments can help shift perceptions around plastic as a purely industrial material.
According to Miranda, the stools were developed to be “hard and soft” at the same time, showcasing the material’s flexibility.
Beyond the installation itself, the project also seeks to connect materials with the communities that use it, specifically the workers on the banana plantation in Jalisco.
“They don’t know what to do with it [after it’s used],” Mirando told Dezeen.
“We need to take care of the broken stuff we are surrounded with.”
Miranda has been working with plastic for years, making consumer objects such as bags from the material.
Banana Blue is on show at Mooni from 8 to 14 February as part of Mexico City Art Week. For more international exhibitions, talks and fairs in architecture and design visit Dezeen Events Guide.
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