Trash Animals

Artur Bordalo processes plastic waste into huge sculptures and wall reliefs depicting animals. For the festival, he designed a seven-meter-high and five-meter-wide squirrel growing out of the front of a Northwest Station warehouse. In memory of one of his most famous murals—a red squirrel—that was destroyed in Dublin, Bordalo II resurrects it for the Calle Libre festival as a colorful trash sculpture. The animal's cuteness is a deception, however, and the artist's concern becomes apparent upon closer examination of the material: "Misdirected" waste leads to decades of accumulation of toxic constituents in our environment and in garbage areas. "This waste comes back to us in one way or another if we don't take care of it properly," according to the artist.