Ari Bayuaji – Weaving the Ocean

Ari Bayuaji’s latest exhibition focuses on tapestries made from plastic ropes that washed up on shore in Indonesia and then were unravelled into fine, colourful thread. The artist, who splits his time between Montreal and Bali, called on locally recruited assistants to scour the roots of mangrove trees for entangled ropes.

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“Plastic is so abundant in our environment these days that it has essentially now became a major element of the natural world,” the artist says. “Our lives have become entangled with plastic products in much the same fashion as the coral that I found growing on plastic ropes along the shoreline.”

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This video from the exhibition at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain in Montreal is a walk-through and shows how the project started as the pandemic began. (In English with French captions)

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Artwork from the Weaving The Ocean project was also recently featured as part of the Kennedy Center’s RiverRun festival in Washington, DC (2023).  The artist will next be creating significant installation works for the Cheongju Crafts Biennale 2023 and Busan Sea Art Festival 2023, both in South Korea.

Exhibition site here.

Artist website, here.