Between 2018 and 2020, I created a photo inventory of over 500 disposable gloves. I never left my house intending to document these gloves, but the randomness of daily life led me to this situation on different streets in Madrid. At first, it was curious to find those hands that seemed to be saying something, like a catalog of urban expressions. Absent gestures, some petrified on the sidewalks, while others continued their journey in search of a new destination to plasticize.
These “hands,” these disposable plastic gloves, are usually available in markets and fruit stands for handling food. Their use is mandatory, although we only use them for a few minutes before discarding them. I wonder, is it really necessary to use plastic gloves to handle a banana that has its own peel? Is it the market logic that drives these decisions? Is it coherent that these plastic gloves, meant for hygiene, end up on the streets as litter? Is the consumption of all this plastic waste sustainable?
This project expresses the culture of excess in our societies and how hygiene is understood to benefit an industry that pollutes uncontrollably.
The photobook was conceived as a kind of repetitive and seemingly meaningless monologue, a clear expression of our own inability to manage our waste and how cities have become the largest pollution centers on the planet.
A photobook and a videoart by Alicia Caldera Guerrero
