Dodi Reifenberg

Green Bag Movement is my invitation to you to think about the beauty that happens when man-made waste is thoughtfully recycled. It is a big carpet garden of used plastic bags, loosely contained by a long, skinny green belt. Toward the end of the carpet garden, there’s a small portrait of Dr. Wangari Maathai. Dr. Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize because she developed a broad based grass roots organization called the Green Belt Movement, which has helped women in Kenya to plant more than 30 million trees so far on their farms and schools and church grounds. At the same time, the movement has trained 30,000 women in forestry and bee keeping and other trades to help them earn income while preserving their lands and resources.
I made Dr. Maathai’s portrait from tiny fragments cut from recycled plastic bags, which I piece together with sticky tape like a mosaic. What I’d like you to do is to stroll through the carpet garden to take a close look at her portrait. Don’t worry if plastic bags fly out of the garden or fall over its walls when you walk through them. The nice security guard has been asked to tend the carpet garden, by using a trash hook to return any stray bags. Biography Dodi Reifenberg (1960 in Haifa, Israel) lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Artist statements

Biography

Dodi Reifenberg (*1960 Haifa, Israel) lives and works in Berlin