Plastic Placentas

Plastic Placentas
2025
Recycled low-density polyethylene (LDPE) fuse beads on stainless steel trays
Dimensions variable on 4 x (40 x 30 x 2.5cm) trays

Plastic Placentas is a series of four 2D images of a human placenta made of plastic fuse beads, found second hand. They are presented on stainless steel surgical trays. 

Fuse beads were a childhood delight. We never had them at home, so I remember being desperate to play with them at friends’ houses to make these magical plastic pictures which became permanent objects with the application of an iron.

Microplastics were first found in human placentas in a study in 2020 led by Prof Matthew Campen at the University of New Mexico, and more recently another study, led by Dr Enrico Barrozo, of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, found a link between microplastics in placentas and premature births.

I never saw my own placenta, it was whisked away and disposed of before I had the chance to marvel at this incredible new organ I had made. Online photos of placentas are blurred by Google, further obscuring them. 

The fuse beads become these pixels of colour: muscular red, blood lilac, fatty white and vein blue, rebuilding new placentas of mine. I work through the box of beads to make as many as I can with them - the colours becoming increasingly abstract, until lurid greens and popping yellows replace any bodily association. 

The process of making this work attempts to hold these dichotomies - the joy, nostalgia and innocence of childhood craft; the debilitating awareness of climate destruction; and the reflections on birth experiences.