The Shrine, Z'bel Manifesto
On June 5th 2018, in celebration of the World Environment Day, the group of Marrakeshian artists Z'bel Manifesto, composed of Ghizlane Sahli, Katia Sahli and Othman Zine, created an installation out of plastic waste. The installation is placed in a former nineteenth century water windmill, now deprived of its blades.
In front of the high entrance door is a niche, a sort of altar with a mirror at eye level, where the visitor can capture his own reflection surrounded by a multicoloured tapestry of residues, used packaging, painstakingly deformed and illuminated in such a way that the composition becomes a kaleidoscope of shapes and colours of great plastic beauty, and this is really the case in both senses of the word, because they only use waste material to realize their installations, covering the entire space at their disposal. Their favourite themes are the consumer society and the metamorphosis of matter. Waste takes on a second life, becomes mysterious and not only reused but transcended, and thus more beautiful than the original product. The artists question the visitors about overconsumption and affirm the urgency of recycling.
The mill is transformed into a temple and reliquary, where the visitor sees his own reflection and can think about the essential necessity of recycling. In Europe alone, we produce around 25 million tons of plastic waste a year, that even China does not want to take any more. The environmental degradation is today’s biggest issue for humanity.
The World Environment Day is the UN's most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. Since its creation in 1974, it has grown to become a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries.
Each World Environment Day is organized around a theme that focuses attention on a particularly pressing environmental concern. The theme for 2018 was beating plastic pollution.