On Friday, August 1 at 18.00, Mari-Leen Kiipli’s solo exhibition Plastic Ways, Salty Stones will open at Draakoni Gallery. The exhibition will remain on view until August 23, 2025.

Salty seawater polishes coastal stones to a smooth gloss, erodes shorelines, and gives rise to clay and sand. Metamorphic rocks, erratic boulders, stones embedded within other stones – all formed in the heat of the earth’s crust, from once-pliable matter. The wave that erodes the land brings in concrete, gravel, and synthetic debris. A diffuse presence drifts through the seawater – plastic particles circulating in my bloodstream, embedded in my tissues.

Plastics were invented to isolate, to shield us from dirt and decay. In our pursuit of cleaner, sleeker environments, the very material we devised as a barrier has begun to reshape us. Micro- and nanoplastics circulate through air currents between land, sea, and atmosphere. It crumbles from our hands and disperses, merging with bodies, water, and sand to form conglomerates and new sediments. Even though we have shaped it, we cannot fully grasp what forms it will ultimately take. Remaining unchanged, it remakes ecosystems and reconfigures the beings within them. Could bioplastics made from algae offer a solution to the problem of plastic accumulation, or do they merely echo the logic of plastic, the notion that all matter is infinitely formable, malleable, and disposable?

Mari-Leen Kiipli

Seaweed powder agar agar, charcoal, quartz sand, beach sand, concrete, clay from Kaberneeme beach, jewellery, pyrite formations, bronze casting, metal rods, metal grid, ceramics, plastic pots, sweet tobacco plant, henbane plant, jimsonweed plant

The artist’s gratitude goes to: Artjom Jurov, Santtu Laine, Inka Nieminen, KuvA Sculpture department

The exhibitions at Draakoni Gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Ministry of Culture, and Liviko AS.