In her roles as artist, designer and scientist Pinar Yoldas takes an interdisciplinary approach to the field of biological phenomena, as well as to the use of digital technologies. She creates extensive installations, kinetic objects and film-based works focused on contemporary issues surrounding post-humanism, eco-nihilism and a feminist-oriented techno-science.
Ecosystem of Excess
Since 2013 Pinar Yoldas has been working on the ongoing project Ecosystem of Excess that addresses the phenomenon of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a garbage vortex of marine debris particles that was discovered in 1997 in the North Pacific and which comprises several million tons of plastic waste. It is symptomatic of the increasing pollution of the oceans and marine life by plastic waste materials mankind has discarded. Against this background in Ecosystem of Excess Yoldas developed a series of speculative organisms that this plastic soup in the oceans might give birth to, and which could actually thrive in such conditions. In addition to prototypes of various plants and animals her work also encompasses several light boxes that exemplarily explore and categorize the relation between human consumer world, plastic waste, and the new creatures. The scientific nature of her work is continued in the choice of installation display, which recalls the presentation typically used in natural history museums. While on the one hand Yoldas’ work can be read as a complex example of the productive conjunction of artistic and scientific strategies, simultaneously, in employing prototypes of speculative organisms it opens up the possibility of new symbioses between the field of the organic (nature) and the inorganic (culture). Through the hypothetical surmounting of what are traditionally considered contrary fields, the Ecosystem of Excess project also reveals a deeper context for reflection by countering the current pessimistic concept of our future with a previously unexpressed utopian potential.