Ines Katamso – Welcome to the Plastic Age, 2024

Ines Katamso’s approach is both scientific and spiritual: she cultures bacteria to study their shapes but she also brings Balinese and Javanese mythology into play, with fantastic creatures drawn from animism and Hinduism. Ines Katamso is an Indonesian-French artist based in Bali, where she explores the island’s traditional culture as well as its contemporary issues, foremost among which is the pollution of the countryside. In response, she has turned to traditional craft techniques using recycled materials to create sustainable works.

In her work, Welcome to the Plastic Age, Ines Katamso has been inspired by recent scientific discoveries showing that nanoplastic particles are infiltrating bodies and organisms. In this new era, human beings have produced so much plastic that the material is no longer just omnipresent in our daily lives, but also forms most of our bodies, the flora and the land surfaces. In her installation, animal, vegetable and mineral matter has been turned into chimeras occupying a lifeless, colourless landscape. Strange fossils made from material collected, transformed and sculpted in Bali give a mythical dimension to this plastic, which the artist describes as a “faceless monster”.