Clean City Champions: Artist Edition!
By Anne Whiting
Raising awareness of waste through art.
We are excited to profile some NYC artists who are creatively using discarded objects and waste materials in their creative, immersive, and socially conscious artistic practices. Using found, leftover, and discarded objects, as well as disposable single-use items otherwise made to become waste, NYC Sanitation (DSNY) archives and more, each of these artists creates work that draws attention to waste management and our culture of disposability. Their work raises our awareness of all the materials that need to get picked up day after day in order to keep New York City clean. Read on to see how these artists transform what we throw away into something that asks us to look closer at our waste culture.
Borinquen Gallo
Borinquen Gallo is an Italian-Puerto Rican Bronx-based artist who makes large-scale sculptures and installations using a range of repurposed materials
Borinquen uses everyday utilitarian, construction, and packaging materials, including trash bags, debris netting and caution tape—twisting, knitting, and threading them into intricate weavings, sculptures and installations. The idea is to turn hyper-familiar, disposable, and therefore overlooked items - like caution tape - into something surprising and awe-inspiring.
“The inherent qualities of materials that we consume and dispose resonate for me on a personal and social scale. Through manipulating and reconfiguring ordinary, disposable materials into new combinations I extrapolate a beauty in unexpected places while redirecting the viewers’ expectations of what is overlooked and discardable.”
Leftover caution tape, construction netting, and electrical wires constitute materials for Borinquen Gallo’s immersive, disposable-materials-conscious art installations.
Borinquen’s stunning environments, made all the more impressive knowing they are made of daily disposable objects no one would consider to be artistic, aim to explore the tension between natural and artificial materials. She also calls attention to the urgent need to care for both the natural and social fabric of the environment.
Borinquen is currently a Materials For the Arts (MFTA) Artist-in-Residence, in honor of her work reusing materials otherwise sent to landfill, where her work “Unraveling Threads” is on display at the MFTA gallery. If you haven’t heard of it, MFTA is NYC’s largest creative reuse center. It is a division of the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs that partners frequently with NYC Sanitation and the Sanitation Foundation.
Brooklyn-based artist Etty Yaniv uses multiple layers of repurposed materials, both found and from her studio work to create landscapes which “blur the line between the real and the imagined, the organic and the artificial, the chaotic and the orderly.”
Etty’s process starts with the overlooked: scraps of sketches, ink-stained paper, fragments of daily photographs—recycled, torn, stacked, manipulated—materials usually destined for the trash and deemed incompatible. Through a process of layering and deconstruction, remnants are coaxed into three-dimensional forms. This practice isn’t merely about assemblage; it’s a dialogue between the ephemeral and the enduring, a testament to the resilience found in the discarded.
By repurposing found and forsaken objects, Etty challenges the notion of disposability, transforming what was once transient into a narrative of persistence and adaptability. It’s a meditation on materiality, where each piece tells a story of renewal and the beauty inherent in impermanence.
sTo Len
Queens-based sTo Len is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work collaborates with nature to become a discourse on environmentalism and art activism.
Len's work has included collaborations with bodies of water, transforming public space into art studios, recycling waste into art materials, and hosting performances at Superfund sites. Len was the first artist in residence at AlexRenew Wastewater Treatment facility in Alexandria, VA and is a member of Works on Water, a group of artists and activists working with and about water in the face of climate change and environmental justice concerns. His work used contaminated creek water and wastewater to create provocative Suminagashi (floating ink) and Gyotaku (fish impression) artworks. In 2022, he was the Public Artist in Residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation through the PAIR program created by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA).
Historical DSNY signs reprinted with sTo’s Suminagashi techniques, which both add color and raise awareness of water cleanliness.
sTo in his print studio in the DSNY Central Repair Shop, surrounded by found and repurposed Sanitation signs.
As the DSNY Public Artist in Residence, sTo used the historic yet unused print shop of the Central Repair Shop as his art studio. He reprinted long forgotten images as a part of his research into the visual language of sanitation, such as signs that communicate “Don’t Litter, No Dumping, Please Recycle,” etc. His book Sign Language focuses on these sanitation signs and prints. He also created the Office of In Visibility (OOIV) to publicly research and remix DSNY archival materials into his artwork. From film and video to silk-screen posters, interactive public projects and even a video game, sTo’s activations offer a reflection of New York’s sanitation history while highlighting the path that led the city to the environmental issues it faces today. He has also worked extensively with the original DSNY Artist in Residence, Mierle Ukeles, and done numerous artworks based on the now-closed Staten Island landfill, Fresh Kills.
Denise Treizman
Denise Treizman creates immersive installations and sculptural works by blending repurposed materials, handcrafted elements, and remnants of mass consumption. She accumulates and reuses objects without a fixed intention, exploring the seduction of disposable culture while questioning its excess.
Old trampolines, discarded rugs, styrofoam, mops, pre-loved squishy toys, window nets, and hotdog stand umbrellas are just some of the found objects Denise incorporates into her colorful, consumer-culture-inspired installations.
Having lived in many densely populated cities over the years—Santiago, London, San Francisco, New York City, Haifa, and Miami—her practice has stemmed from and benefited from throwaway culture. Born in Chile, as a child visiting America, Denise would bring home lots of “bright tape and hot pink flamingo t-shirts.”
Treizman’s work reflects both a pull towards consumer aesthetics and a deeper inquiry into their transient nature.
As an adult, her childhood fascination with brightly colored yet disposable objects translated to reclaiming objects from New York City sidewalks. As an MFA candidate at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and a Studio Member of the The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in Midtown Manhattan, her work began to include found objects from NYC streets like Sabrett hot dog cart umbrellas, yellow taxi bumpers, old tires, and more.
And in further relevance to Sanitation and clean streets initiatives, Denise’s Street Interventions Series makes temporary art pieces using the disposable items left behind on the curb.
