This May 10th the art of Benjamin Von Wong reached Toronto. He threw about 200kg of plastic in front of the Riplay’s Aquarium of Canada and nobody said a word about this behaviour. Is it because he is an artist? Is it because he has over 100M of organic views? Or because he “wanna make your impact unforgettable”
Well for those who don’t know about Benjamin, he is a Canadian artist who born in Toronto, Mr. Von has a career in mining Engineering but in 2012 he decided to let it go and pursue his career as an artist. He is world wide recognized for his performance installations and photographie about the human print in the world especially against the ocean plastic.
He is a contemporary artist who creates Hyper-realistic art installations with help of artists,artisans and volunteers around the world.
“HI, IM VON WONG, AND I MAKE YOUR IMPACT UNFORGETTABLE”
Some of his more recognize art installations are the followings:
Strawpocalypse
“The Parting of the Plastic Sea” by Von Wong. (Team and volunteers)
“The Parting of the Plastic Sea” by Von Wong. It’s an art installation which uses more than 168,000 straws collected off the street by many volunteers in Vietnam. The recollection of the primary material took about 6 months, but the real challenge was to clean up this second life straws. After 2 weeks of hard work everything was ready to build this masterpiece of 3.3m. This piece has collected more than 2M views, holds a Guinness record as the largest drinking straw sculpture and more than 100,000 persons have visited.
“Although this installation is made from straws, it isn’t just about straws. It’s about taking a first step towards paying attention to the plastic epidemic threatening the oceans we rely on.”
“E-Waste resurrected” sculptures by Von Wong
“E-Waste resurrected”
In 2018 Benjamin partnered with a famous electronic company, to talk about their global recycling program. Benjamin and his team created 3 sculptures using 4,100 lb of recycled e-waste this campaign had as a goal to aware the conscious of every person about how many e-waste we are creating, inviting you to participate in the recycling programs and even better to repair or reuse every electronic item especially in north America where the acquisition power is very high. Sometimes it is easier to purchase a new laptop instead of fixing the one you have.
About 50 volunteers work 10 days long to create these 3 amazing sculptures.
“After all, how do you convince people that recycling e-waste can be cool? Perhaps the first step was to show how past electronics had the potential to power future devices.”
#turnofftheplastictap by Von Wong. Photographies of Raymundo Moreno
Last but not least, in fact this is the art installation which you can visit and appreciate in Toronto downtown #turnofftheplastictap is one of the latest art installations of Benjamin, over 200 kg of recycled plastic is used to bring alive and crete this installation.
This campaign brings topics to the table which are everything but cliche.
Which kind of future are you leaving to the next generation?
Did you know that over 90% of plastic ends up in landfills in poorer countries?
Did you know that every 60 seconds about 200 kg of plastic goes to the ocean?
“PULLING TOGETHER THIS PROJECTS MAKES ME BELIEVE THAT CHANGE IS POSSIBLE”
Don’t miss the opportunity to visit this art installation for free in front of Ripley’s aquarium canada. Available from May 10th to June 9th.
If you wanna know more about the artist visit his website he is always looking for volunteers and collaborations. https://www.vonwong.com
Also you can read: The art behind the CN tower
Raymundo Moreno is a contemporary, multidisciplinary and conceptual artist, who works through dance, performance, painting, sculpture, dance films and writing. He is passionate to talk about social movements and artistic activism. He was born in Puebla, Mexico, earned a degree in dance in the school of arts at the University of the Américas Puebla (UDLAP) in Mexico. He is currently living in Toronto.
