In the glass lobby of New York’s 3 World Trade Center, Beverly Barkat’s blonde hair swayed over her face as she bent over to surreptitiously pick up a receipt from the ground, dropped by one of the city’s many tourists, businessmen or dwellers. the building. It has become a natural moment for the Israeli artist who, for 3 years, collected public waste for his new large-scale installation.
Behind Barkat is the project: a 13-foot globe sphere that glows with 180 panels of what appears to be a stained glass window. Resin coating glued on a combination of plastic waste and fishing nets. Looking inside one of the two empty dial window panels to look at its textured interior shows the terrible truth. Earth’s colorful land masses, scattered islands, and vast blue oceans are all made of garbage. .
“What we’re doing is covering ourselves with plastic waste,” Barkat told the Observer. “It has to suffocate us. ” The artist, who was commissioned to create a site-specific installation for the construction of the World Trade Center in 2017, first came up with the concept of Earth Poetica during a vacation between New York, her home in Jerusalem, and Venice, where she worked. in some other exhibition of the time. On one of the many flights, he filmed a documentary about the challenge of plastic waste. Her description of young people rescuing beaches to find plastic to sell “was shocking” to Barkat, recalling memories of her formative years in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she grew up collecting shells in the ocean before moving to Israel at the age of 10. Secondly, is this what we give to our young people?Barkat thought, “Is this what we’re leaving to the next generation?”
Armed with endless maps, adding a flipped one, while Barkat runs in Earth Poetica from the inside, she began the procedure of researching and creating the installation. The artist and her 3 daughters had been collecting plastic tea for homework while traveling until Covid hampered their efforts. But when Barkat’s paintings were announced, foreigners in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia began sending him documents. “Other people cleaned it up before sending it. Some of them didn’t. “Barkat noticed with a laugh.
Determining the appropriate resin to use a trial and error procedure. The artist “tested all the resins in Israel” before leaving for North America, where she discovered a soy-based resin to mold the earth’s tea panels. The sphere is supported by a metal structure, with cables crisscrossing in the hollow interior of Earth Poetica, along bamboo scaffolding to bring a detail of nature. “Each level is like a wrestling match,” Barkat said.
Bottles of San Benedetto water bottles and empty bags of frozen green peas dot the elegant surface of Earth Poetica. But the mass of plastic waste is dispersed according to its geographical origins. Pollution is limited across borders, according to Barkat. in the ocean of all other countries. “
The oceans are a sea of crumpled blue plastic, with tiny pieces of trash strewn everywhere, representing “the plastic that breaks into those nanopieces that pass into our food because fish eat them,” Barkat said. He noted that five ocean spaces in the facility involve pieces of fishing nets, where real-life currents accumulate, namely gigantic collections of waste, 60% of which are made up of nets.
Despite its heavy theme, Earth Poetica’s resin and tea create a charming effect of colorful stained glass, especially when light enters through the building’s windows. New York. Fashion, beauty, jewelry. It had to be something like a jewel, a huge jewel. The facility was aptly opened in construction on the United Nations’ World Environment Day on June 5, after being on display at the Gottesman Family Israel Aquarium. in Jerusalem for almost a year.
Barkat, who runs a studio in Jerusalem, was born to two ceramists. Although she protested that she would never be an artist, she continued her studies at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and then worked on internal architectural projects. After raising his children, Barkat embarked on a three-year studio with celebrated painter Israel Hirschberg.
“At some point, I thought, okay, I really want to invest in my art,” he said. Married to Nir Barkat, the former mayor of Jerusalem and current Israel’s minister of economy and industry, she began running when her husband entered politics. to help separate the couple’s careers. ” That’s why I went to London, Japan, Venice, Rome and the United States; I did anything here,” he said.
Barkat has just returned from Wyoming’s Pryor Mountains to examine wild horses for his upcoming project, which will explore freedom and movement through oil paintings. pieces trigger a more exclusive artistic process. ” Great works are more complex than my brain knows. If my own brain knows, someone else has already done it.
And poetic land? The installation will be on display at 3 World Trade Center through the fall. It may then go to Nairobi, where the United Nations is holding a summit on plastic waste, according to Barkat, who hopes the facility will eventually find a permanent home. It comes from waste, I don’t need it to spoil again.
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