Polycrisis - Sarah Ziessen
Intimate (verb/ IN tih mutt) Objects
Thinking about buying a coffee today? Here’s a fun quiz to help you get the order just right
1. What percent of paper cups is plastic?
2. Which is better for you, animal welfare and the environment?
a, Rice milk
b, Cow milk
c, Soy milk
d, Almond milk
e, No milk
3. What percent of paper cups get recycled?
4. How many ‘paper’ cups are thrown away every day?
Mimicking single-use paper cups in permanent ceramic, Intimate Objects replaces standard milk options with a quiz on environmental facts. The work explores the weight of eco-anxiety—the constant mental fatigue of trying to make ethical choices in a world where every decision carries a hidden cost.
As a maker using mined materials and high-heat kilns, I am not outside this problem; I am complicit in it. By translating the deceptive lightness of paper into the heavy reality of fired clay, Intimate Objects intimates the inescapable friction between human desire, material footprint, and daily consumption.
Intimate (adjective / IN tih mayt) Objects
Intimate /ˈɪn.tɪ.mət/ — adjective: Deeply personal, private, or closely bound to one's body and life.
Underwear is our most personal layer—worn next to the skin, hidden, and essential. Here, garments crafted from the plastic linings of single-use paper cups hang to dry on an Edwardian rack, laying bare just how intimately our daily lives are entangled with unsustainable production.
The work "airs out" the quiet greenwashing that masks convenience culture, while confronting the reality of consumer guilt. Making "clean" or sustainable choices is often expensive, complex, and inaccessible to low-income households. By placing these plastic garments within the grand bedroom of the historic Pah Homestead, Intimate Objects reflects on economic privilege, showing that while eco-anxiety affects us all, the ability to buy one's way out of culpability is a luxury few can afford.
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