“This project was born during the early months of the pandemic to address the problem of excess household waste. Faced with the reality of having to redefine my focus and reinvent my work, I decided to start from scratch or, more precisely, from scraps.

To begin, two questions:
How can I make things happen with limited resources?
How can I use discarded everyday materials to reinvent usable objects?

Going back to the guidelines I used in previous works, I based the project on three fundamental ideas: sustainability, reusability and transformability, keeping in mind my essential concept that my creations have to merge art and purpose.

The objects are conceived as unique aesthetic pieces that serve a practical function in order to be integrated in our daily environment. I want to convey the notion that art combined with usefulness can transform ordinary objects into an everyday inspiring experience. Vases, lamps, wall pieces are some of the objects designed from cardboard, egg carton, paper, newspaper, plastic and glass containers that I had accumulated.

The process for most of the pieces is to build cardboard structures that are then covered using papier-maché and then coated with cardboard pulp. The vases are designed bottomless, acting as “sleeves” over the plastic or glass receptacles, helping eliminate some of our plastic and glass waste.

The raw materials are shredded and mixed by hand to make the pulp. The colour remains mostly natural or is tinted with natural dyes and food colourings. Other recycled materials such as fabric scraps and sawdust are sometimes added to the cardboard pulp mix to bring different qualities to the material.

What we need for making is already around us.”

– Christine Tatilon