In this project, I focused on the issue of fast fashion, which represents a huge environmental threat.

I chose the appropriation strategy.
I worked with photographs found on the Internet, in two categories – images from the campaigns of the H&M brand, which is one of the leading manufacturers of fast fashion, and images that record the effects of fast fashion on the environment, work in textile factories, and enlarged images of microplastics.

These photographs were used as pieces of a mosaic, while I tried to emphasize the relationship, but also the contrast, between the glitter of fashion campaigns luring consumers to buy cheap pieces of clothing, presented by smiling models, and the world made of waste from these clothes and exploitative factories, in which they work in endless shifts and slave conditions for a few cents a day and girls and children of the same age and even much younger who were not lucky enough to have a place of birth.

To strengthen the meaning, I worked with the properties of a large-format mosaic as an optical illusion.

Just as the connection between these two worlds is not immediately obvious to many people and the textile industry is still a hidden threat, the pieces of the mosaic are not immediately visible upon entering the space where we first notice the superficial advertising visuals. However, the closer we are, the more it disappears, just as its attractiveness disappears for us when we examine this issue more closely.

While slow fashion works with quality materials and produces clothes and accessories that last in the wardrobe for several years, fast fashion churns out huge quantities of low-quality products that often fall apart after a few uses and end up in landfills and the wild.

During production, artificial, often non-recyclable fibers and their mixtures, toxic dyes are used, an enormous amount of carbon dioxide and other by-products are released into the air, it pollutes and consumes a huge amount of water. The textile industry also contributes to the climate crisis to a large extent. In addition, microplastics are released from textile waste after decomposition, which pose serious health risks for humans and animals.

The solution is to change shopping behavior, frequency of shopping, preferring slow fashion brands, donating and selling unworn and used clothes through bazaars or swaps, and above all, realizing the seriousness of this problem before it’s too late.

The basis of the mosaic is an image created on watercolor paper using a combined technique (graphite pencils, acrylic, wax pastel) in a semi-realistic style based on collages from images from advertising campaigns.

This painting was subsequently photographed with a digital camera, enlarged and mosaics are created from it in the Andrea mosaic graphics program, the parts of which are images recording the impact of the textile industry.
The output is a 1 x 1 m mosaic printed on matte photo paper.

The project was created in the subject Art analysis in Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica under the guidance Mgr. art. Matúš Maťátko.