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From Trash to Fashion: Understanding Wearable Art as Environmental Activism
Summary
This paper examines wearable art projects that incorporate plastic waste as a form of environmental activism and material rhetoric, arguing that fashioning trash into garments makes ecological crises tangible and challenges consumer culture through aesthetic engagement.
This paper employs critical discourse analysis and environmental communication theories to exam-ine how wearable art projects like Trashion Fashion and Wan Yunfeng’s plastic couture function as forms of material rhetoric and ecological activism. Drawing on theories of object-oriented ontology (Harman, 2018), waste studies (Hawkins, 2006), and visual rhetoric (Finnegan, 2001), we argue that these interventions per-form three crucial functions: They materialize the abstract concept of waste pollution; Creating affective en-counters that disrupt consumption habits; Reconfiguring human-waste relationships through aesthetic transfor-mation. Our analysis reveals how these projects operate within what Bennett (2010) calls “vibrant matter” to challenge neoliberal waste regimes while offering new paradigms for sustainable engagement.
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