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Jordan-based artist Maria Nissan is on a mission: to rid the world of single-use plastics and to lift public consciousness concerning the environmental scourge by eye-catching artwork.
Certainly one of her best-known murals graces the facet of a constructing within the capital Amman, a large work produced from greater than 2,000 plastic bottles, nearly 1,000 purchasing baggage and over 150 hookah pipe hoses.
A US citizen of Iraqi origin, Nissan mentioned she grew to become enchanted with Amman when she first visited three years in the past, but additionally felt “frustration and anger” on the piles of rubbish on the streets and in areas of pure magnificence.
“Regardless of the great thing about town, strolling its streets is usually a journey full of every kind of trash,” the 35-year-old mentioned.
“My eyes can’t flip away from the ample shiny plastic baggage, glass bottles, soda cans, sweet bar wrappers,” mentioned Nissan, who sometimes sports activities a costume produced from a sturdy blue Ikea bag.
Skilled in portray and drawing in the USA and Italy, Nissan determined to gather and repurpose the trash to create artwork — typically collages themed on girls’s faces, flowers and Oriental motifs.
Her house, the place she has a rooftop workspace beneath a big cover, is full of each possible sort of discarded plastic object, from razors and toothbrushes to lighters, pens and plastic spoons.
“Artwork manufactured from plastic is a concrete and highly effective strategy to elevate considerations on environmental points that have an effect on Jordanians, their youngsters, their communities and pure environments within the kingdom,” she mentioned.
– ‘Everyone’s downside’ –
“A bottle littered in a valley will take as much as 450 years to decompose,” mentioned Nissan, stating that the impact is “micro-plastics polluting the soils, water and the wildlife.
“As a result of plastics are littered indiscriminately in fields and water, livestock and fish feed themselves not directly with plastic items that we’ll finally discover on our plates.”
Nissan’s work has been exhibited in 12 reveals in Jordan in addition to in Italy and Greece, and options on her Instagram channel @marianissanart, all with the aim of fixing minds and habits.
Jordanians use three billion plastic baggage yearly, a part of the nation’s annual stable waste load of two.2 million tonnes, of which solely seven p.c is recycled, in line with the UN Improvement Programme.
Nissan urges individuals to keep away from shopping for plastic merchandise and to buy groceries with reusable baggage, and in addition advocates a tax on single-use plastics.
“The implications of single-use plastic air pollution are sometimes delayed, and due to this fact it’s troublesome to have individuals really feel accountable and chargeable for their very own acts,” she mentioned.
“Plastic comes again to us in a technique or one other … It is no one’s accountability till it turns into all people’s downside.”
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