The Plastic Pyramid

An artwork by Ingo Hoffmann

“What we consume today, our children will breathe tomorrow.”

Introduction

Each cap, each wrapper, each plastic object seems harmless.
Thrown away, forgotten, replaced.

Yet nothing truly disappears.
Plastic accumulates, buries itself, is incinerated,
escapes into the oceans, and seeps into our soils, our bodies, our lives.

A Silent Cry

This Pyramid is a silent cry.
It symbolizes the absurd structure we are building,
day after day, cap after cap:

A mountain of waste, raised without awareness, without end.
A modern pyramid — not to honour the dead,
but to bury the future.

An Engaged Artwork

Inspired by the research of Dr. Nathalie Gontard (INRAE),
this work denounces the overconsumption of plastic
and the misguided belief in recycling,
often used as an excuse to consume without guilt.

Recycling is not enough.
Art must not become an alibi.

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“Just because we can make an artwork from bottle caps
doesn’t mean we should keep producing them.”

A Monument to Collective Denial

I do not want to beautify plastic — I want to confront it.
To show it as it is: omnipresent, persistent, suffocating.

The Pyramid is not a celebration, but a warning —
a signal raised against our indifference.

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Through its massive presence, it questions
our relationship to matter, responsibility, and the future.

It invites each of us to see differently what we throw away,
to refuse the obvious, and to choose sobriety.

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What if art could change the way we see what we consume?