‘Consumed!’ is an installation at Evergreen Brick Works that invites viewers to reconsider their relationship with material goods. It questions the cycle of consumption and imagines a world where style is measured not by newness or trendiness but by sustainability and creativity.
This reimagined micro-living environment takes the waste created by our daily coffee and tea rituals and transforms it into home decor. Using the unconventional materials of used coffee filters, tea bags, discarded coffee packaging, and burlap coffee sacks, the work offers a playful exploration of material transformation while critiquing our throw-away consumer culture.
When it’s not difficult to change decor with the seasons or trends, the environmental toll is often ignored, while each item, however small or inexpensive, carries unseen costs. But ‘Consumed!’ goes beyond environmental critique to question the “market-reflected gaze”—a subtle force that can shape how we judge our homes and the homes of others, creating pressure to achieve an ideal that is both elusive and unsustainable.
Creating beauty and function from waste, ‘Consumed!’ challenges these narratives and asks us to rethink our approach to consumption in all of its interpretations.
This installation is part of ‘Coffee Culture,’ an ongoing body of work by Jennifer Coghill that explores themes of home, ritual, memory, and the alchemy of re-use using the detritus of our daily coffee and tea habits.