P.O.V.: You are a banana
POV: You’re a Banana is an inflatable architectural installation developed by Norberto Miranda Feldhahn that reimagines plastic waste as a structural and communal medium. The project transforms agricultural LDPE-4 plastic into an immersive pneumatic space, expanding the scale of upcycling from object to inhabitable environment.
Originally produced in 2023 with support from Independencia Centro using reclaimed materials from previous cultural events, the inflatable has now entered its third year of life. Rather than preserving it as a static artifact, the project proposes a ceremonial dismantling: the material will be recovered and reconfigured into new objects, including handbags and functional accessories entering their fourth life cycle. The installation becomes both architecture and material reservoir.
Material Origin
The blue plastic originates from banana plantations in Cihuatlán, Jalisco, specifically Rancho La Vena; where protective agricultural covers constitute a stable post-consumer waste stream.
Transparent plastics are recovered from mattress packaging, wholesale wrapping and street-collected materials; colored elements derive from discarded festival flags, party tablecloths and single-use LDPE bags.
Through manual thermoforming techniques using heat, air and soldering tools, the material is recomposed into a near monomaterial system (LDPE-4). This allows structural continuity across scales: inflatable envelopes, stools, lighting, bags and sculptural surfaces all emerge from the same recovered polymer.
“The project began in the banana groves of Cihuatlán, Jalisco. The blue agricultural covers protecting fruit from market blemishes became a stable waste source and the foundation of what would become Bolsas Bolsón. Few techniques encapsulate ethics so visibly in their aesthetics. The future, if it exists, will not arrive from elsewhere; it will be built from what already lies at our feet.”
-Alejandro Cámara, Art Curator
Fourth Life
P.O.V. does not end with exhibition. It mutates.
During January, the inflatable was dismantled in a symbolic public action, closing its third life cycle and releasing its material into a fourth iteration: standardized bags and objects derived from the same surface that once held air and bodies.
Volumetric stools exhibited alongside the installation are filled with compressed agricultural plastic, weighing approximately 11–15 kg each; four units represent roughly one metric ton of harvested bananas. Lamps and bags function as research conclusions — material witnesses of circular experimentation.
Very few first-use materials are introduced; most pieces contain between 90–100% recovered plastic by weight.
Over two years, P.O.V. was installed 11 times in museums, galleries, universities, and public and private venues, engaging over 10,000 people and generating sustained dialogue and collaboration.
“Encountering a material can be a metaphysical experience. We speak of discovering the sculpture inside marble, or accepting the will of wood. But what of plastic? Our relationship with it has been defined by consumption and disposal. Norberto introduces the idea of ancestral plastic — a reminder that petroleum itself is fossil matter compressed over millions of years. What if this ‘artificial’ material is, in fact, geological memory?”
-Alejandro Cámara, Art Curator
From the crisis of overproduction emerges a fictional world of radical empathy. POV and projects alike continue the exploration of repair, care and trust through second-, third- and fourth-life materials sourced from agricultural and urban waste streams.
The project operates as a nearly monomaterial practice centered on LDPE-4, developing transdisciplinary design across scales — from inflatable architecture to furniture, lighting and fashion accessories. Technical processes continue evolving, with potential for future mechanization while retaining manual agency as a critical position.
Vestimenta × Cravioto @kcravioto
Texto de exposición de @camarafrias
Esta exposición es posible gracias a @independenciacentro @paubarrragan
@bolsasbolson @cccostalegre Ashida Agro @moneyash @sof.cm