Marta Torrecilla (Madrid, 1986) stands out as one of the young promises of contemporary art on the Canary Islands. Artist and architect, her work is committed to ecology, specially focusing on the problem of plastic production and consumption. With “El viaje de los residuos” (“The Journey of Waste”), Torrecilla creates an impressive sculpture with architectural echoes that is used to aesthetically unveil information that is hidden to the general public: all plastic products consumed in the Canary Islands are produced in Asia, consumed, disposed of and separated here, and, due to the lack of local recycling facilities, sent back to Asian countries for recycling. Torrecilla shows the return journey of the plastic waste, more than 30,000 km to be used just once. With the help of a scaffolding structure placed at Parque Doramas a container of a cargo ship is on display. As a metaphor of the container, the structure is stripped off to show its interior: blocks of plastic waste already compacted. At SaladeArteSocial.COM, the digital version will allow us to discover the journey made by the containers together with an interactive storytelling game, in which the “virtual navigator” will be able to choose which story an object of her choice will live through (a plastic bag, a yogurt cup, a disposable cutlery, etc). Through a series of options, the journey will be recreated: eventually, to return as waste to the place where it was produced, to return to the place where it was disposed of, to end up in the sea or to be illegally incinerated.
