Tag: exhibition

I have always been interested in environmental issues, and I deeply appreciate every initiative aimed at educating and raising awareness about environmental protection and the preservation of the different species that inhabit our world.

Being in Savona for a few days, I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that Archeoplastica had organized the temporary museum of beached waste at the city’s Priamar Fortress.

Archeoplastica is a national environmental awareness project founded by Enzo Suma, a nature guide from Ostuni (Italian region of Apulia) and founder of an association actively involved in organizing waste collection days on the beach. From these recovery initiatives, a large number of stranded plastic objects dating back to the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and the following decades have emerged, testifying to how much plastic pollutes when abandoned in the environment. Then Archeoplastica became a virtual museum with its own website, giving rise to virtuous plastic recovery initiatives at other Italian beaches and resulting in a series of exhibitions that have also been covered in depth by Italian television networks and national newspapers. Thanks to all this, today Archeoplastica is a very active community on social media that, through the voices of many people, reconstructs and collects the sometimes incredible stories hidden behind the objects that are collected on the beach after a long journey.

The temporary exhibition at the Priamar Fortress represents Archeoplastica’s first display in Liguria, and has been titled “50 Years of Beached Waste: Vices and Virtues of Plastic between Product Design, Advertising and Eco-Sustainability”. The exhibition aims not only to showcase a series of exhibits accompanied by a wealth of information and videos, but also to historicize the role of plastic by highlighting its vices and virtues, as well as its ability to transform itself through recycling or to reinvent itself into bioplastics appropriate to our lifestyles and consumption.

I visited the exhibition last Saturday with my mother (who remembers many of the objects displayed because they date back to her childhood) and it was incredibly interesting to be able to learn the story behind these objects that emerged from the sea, showcased in the light-flooded halls of the Fortress. I noticed that it is a particularly popular exhibition also because of the strategic location of the Priamar, which is always visited by tourists from the cruise that docks in Savona on a weekly basis.

It was difficult to select pictures for this article because there is a considerable amount of objects displayed, including Yomo Yogurt, a soccer ball, bottles of bleach and Vetril (an Italian brand of glass cleaners), presented as museum exhibits. Below I have chosen five photos I took of the objects found on the beaches, with a brief explanation along with each photo:

1) Caffè Suerte, 1971 (Carovigno Beach) & Cif, 1970s (Salento, 2020): A 1971 advertisement showed that the cost of Caffè Suerte was 570 Italian liras on offer, just as it is written on this tin returned from the sea. Many coffee cans like this one have been found over the years, highlighting that in the late 1960s and early 1970s it was a big seller. The most dated among the ones found would cost 270 liras; in those days, Caffè Suerte was also sold in collectible containers bearing various figures on the graphics. These ones also emerge ashore from time to time, not always intact, which makes you think about the fact that all the plastic that has ended up in the sea still exists since it was first assembled.

Cif is one of the best-known brands most widely used for kitchen cleaning over the decades; this product was used in Italy in the mid-1970s (there was also a similar product in France). As with many old, white-colored garbage, one often gets the impression that it is recent, but if one looks in detail at the dark part of the graphic on the plastic, one can see countless scratches caused by the impact on the reefs. In the 1970s the shape of the cap was an inverted cone, as in the case of the object in question, while in the 1980s it became cylindrical. The shape of the bottle, on the other hand, remained the same for many years. Both products were found on the beaches of Apulia.

2) Barbapapa, 1974 (Ostuni Beach, 2020): One of the most symbolic finds by Archeoplastica is a 1974 Fabianplastica Barbapapa filled with encrustations created by marine organisms. Found in December 2020 on a beach on the Ostuni coast, it looks just like a work of art created by the sea. This find will probably be familiar to adults and children alike because even to this day the Barbapapa cartoon is broadcast on TV. The toy was initially made of soft rubber (which after fifty years has become very hard) and when pressed there was a whistle that sounded at the base. Ironically, Barbapapa is perhaps the first ecologist cartoon, and the found character is precisely that of Barbazoo, the naturalist who defended plants and animals. This Barbapapa has been displayed during several major events, such as the National Geographic exhibition, and can also be found reproduced in 3D on the Archeoplastica virtual museum site.