Mariele Neudecker: Plastic Vanitas

Mariele Neudecker’s photographs of seemingly ephemeral and unrelated plastic objects – hair rollers, drinks bottles, kitchen utensils, all collected during a residency at Museum of Design in Plastics – make reference to vanitas, an eighteenth-century genre of still-life painting. Framed within this tradition, the German artist’s images take on new and unexpected meanings, while also commenting on more modern-day notions of consumerism.