The flow
Our eyes have got used to seeing waste as the final stage, the ugly conclusion that cripples us so as to make us believe that it has run its course and that the time has come to get rid of it. However, it’s actually just a few steps away from becoming a new product, an appealing one. This intervention aims to influence the different ways that the society perceives and experiences objects and time in everyday life. When we look at a pile of garbage, gleaming objects, such as glass bottles, jars and scraps, tend to draw our attention. Glass as a material can be shaped in endless ways, it can be melted, cut and glued to form a whole new object. The bright glassy-like surface of water inspired me to portray water flow: the amount of waste we produce every day turns into a river stream. That’s why I call it “The Flow”; the installation aims to trigger the viewer’s awareness of the waste production. Used bottles are thrown away, broken and crushed once they reach the garbage dump. I reshaped the broken glass by heating it at a high temperature to look like a flowing stream of water. The installation implies solidified volumes of water made out of bottles and jars melted together and expressly arrayed so as to create a series of reflective surfaces. Artwork information:
Afrodite W. Elseesy , an Egyptian glass artist, born in 1988, in 2010 she graduated from Helwan University, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Arts, majoring in glass. She obtained her Master’s Degree in the “Effects of the advanced techniques of free blowing in designing Glass Sculptures for Architecture” in April, 2016. Fascinated by the idea of Art sculptures, especially made out of glass, and influenced by artists like Dale Chihuly, she decided to take glass blowing courses in CMOG, the Corning Museum of Glass in NY and afterwards made her own designs and imposed her idea of implementing them in open spaces in Cairo. She worked as an assistant designer for foreign designers in the Industrial Modernization Center under the Ministry of Industry cooperating with the European Union for the development of ethnic products in Egypt. She managed to work in 2014/2015 as a Technical Manager at CITY GLASSWARE GROUP, a company for glassware decoration. She currently works as a freelance glass artist, making her own designs and executing products commissioned by clients. |