Creating informative and powerful sculptures from a devastating ocean trash site, Alejandro Durán focuses on the issue of plastic pollution in his ongoing project Washed Up. Located in the Mexican UNESCO World Heritage site, Sian Ka’an, Washed Up addresses the huge amount of trash carried from shore to shore before it settles in this stunning ecological reserve and barrier reef. Worked over a series of visits to the area since early 2010, Durán has created site-specific sculptures, distributing the objects the way the waves would, but in carefully formed color schemes.

Through the course of the project, documented with this striking photo series, Durán has identified washed up products from as many as 42 countries. His work illuminates the “far-reaching impact of our disposable culture” and environmental concerns regarding vast quantities of waste materials.

Reasserting this trash as art, ‘Washed Up’ suggests we change the way we perceive products, collecting together our ‘waste’ to demonstrate the consequences of casually discarding products.

+ Washed Up Project

Images courtesy of Alejandro Durán