Plasticocene

Art and nature come together at Rome’s Bioparco with a travelling exhibition conceived and curated by artist and educator Elisabetta Milan: an eco-trail dedicated to the aquatic and marine environment, highlighting the importance of biodiversity and inviting us to adopt more sustainable lifestyles.

Every Saturday, Sunday and public holiday, a guide leads visitors on an engaging educational experience in the Sala degli Elefanti at the Bioparco zoo, covering various topics ranging from the birth of plastic to the tropicalisation of the seas due to climate change, overfishing and the invasion of alien species, with a focus on pollution from plastics and microplastics.

The route consists of six installations accompanied by information panels. Five giant jellyfish made from recycled plastic make up the work “Meduse aliene - Alien Jellyfish”, symbolizing alien species and the gelatinous sea that is changing as it becomes increasingly tropicalized. In “Non è solo acqua - It’s not just water”, a microscopic enlargement of a drop of water shows us the extraordinary world of plankton, responsible for much of the oxygen we breathe. The canoe in “Grande pesca - Big Fishing”, sailing on a sea made up of a hundred water bottles, tells the story of the invasion of macro-plastics in rivers and seas, while in “Mangiamo ciò che laviamo - We Eat What We Wash”, a red washing machine with an octopus coming out of the porthole symbolizes the amount of synthetic microfibers that end up in the sea from washing.

“Nautilus” is a clay bas-relief of the mollusk (which appeared on Earth 500 million years ago and is now considered a living fossil) with impressions of everyday plastic objects. Finally, the work “Plasticocene” represents a sea composed of a tangle of blue plastic threads on a base of polystyrene and plastic boxes. A glass urn containing a golden credit card symbolizes the amount of plastic (5 grams) that each person ingests on average in a week.