Veronika is a visual artist in Prague and makes sculptures with recycled materials. She works mainly with used plastic bottles to realise different object like to chandeliers, animals sculpture or fake plants.
A « PET-Art » artist
At the beginning, people thought Veronika was crazy because she collected waste in different neighbourhood plastic bins near Prague. Today, she exhibits her works in several prestigious places like “Le Printemps” in Paris. She’s now seen as a famous plastic artist. Her astonishing chandeliers made from plastic bottles surprisingly look like crystal chandeliers.
“PET-Art” doesn’t refer to art of cat or dogs. It’s the nickname of “PET” which mean “Polyethylene Terephthalate”, the material of plastic bottles. For Veronika, plastic bottles are precious resource for make her sculpture. That is her garage is full of plastic bottles that she keeps for later sculptures.
The plastic, a fantastic world?
At first, it was difficult to find bottles with different colours and to transform it. She was never taught how to manipulate plastic and nobody could help her. Nobody, before her, made sculptures with plastic bottles. Veronika was a pioneer who learned by herself. The plastic bottles are also an infinite material with different colours, shapes and dimensions.
Veronika could observe our society through our waste. Her first work for examples is made only from transparent plastic. Colours came later: blue and green. A few years later came the brown with new beer bottles. Even if today, plastic bottles are everywhere, it was a revolution for her. About ten years ago, limited editions of special plastic bottles were made by beverage producers in order to attract more and more consumers. Veronika saw extraordinary colours like topaque red, pink, gold or black bottles. These colours disappeared today.
A symbol of our waste
According to Veronika, the topic of plastic waste is a big issue. The material itself, PET is a high quality product : strong, light and recyclable. One plastic bottle can be used many times. But unfortunately, plastic bottles are commonly used as single-use products. She contributes to give them a second long life with her sculptures.
The artist reminds us that plastic bottles contributed to improve the condition of life for different population in the whole world. In Africa, those plastic bottles was a revolution as it could bring easily transportable drinking water, much lighter than glass bottle. Unfortunately plastic bottles are now a symbol of plastic pollution. What bother Veronika are the other plastics we can find, especially plastic wraps, and packaging that are useless and much less recyclable.
An global problem
It is pretty convenient for her because she can find plastics all around in the world. Each time it varies from a country to another especially in Japan where plastics factories have and endless creativity. Veronika has no time to rest. She can do her art wherever she wants for free. Therefore she takes part of many exhibitions all over the world and she organizes workshops from time to time in which she teaches how to work with plastic (by heating it) and raises awareness about plastic waste.
She always had good feedbacks amongst her public, even those who are not interested in art. The artist always has many ideas in her mind such as lamps and chandeliers, plants and animals, but her favourite theme in ocean life which is ironically funny if we remember the plastic pollution in the oceans…
If you are interested by Veronika’s work, have a look at the official website:
