Studio Rat engages ongoingly with their collaborative research project Making-With Plastic, a multi-year investigation that began in response to the duo’s complicated relation to plastic. Reflecting on the pervasive reality of plastics in our landscape, Making-With Plastic explores traditional textile arts and fibre crafts by challenging the material origins of these practices and connecting them with art-making in our age of disposability and consumerism.
With support from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2022, the duo collaborated with 7 artists across Canada to reimagine ways of making-with accumulated plastic. The artists Habiba El Esaad, Jessica Mak, Masumi Rodriguez, Willow Sharp, Brenda Shivanandan, Janelle Sookhai and Orit Zewge-Abubaker were invited to repurpose Studio Rat’s waste materials into art objects and useful things.