A Monument of Waste Rises at Gardens by the Bay
Portuguese street artist Bordalo II has returned to Singapore with a seven-metre-tall installation that forces a collision between consumer culture and the natural world. Unveiled on 22 October 2026 at the SG50 Lattice at the Bayfront Pavilion, New Life depicts a mother Sumatran orangutan cradling her infant, both rendered entirely from locally sourced refuse. The sculpture serves as the primary visual anchor for a sustainability initiative led by the insurer Singlife, with support from WWF-Singapore, and is slated to remain on public display until October 2030, according to the Singapore Art & Gallery Guide.
The work marks a notable return for the artist, coming exactly four years after his monumental Sumatran tiger installation occupied the same location. GraffitiStreet reported that the project represents a significant evolution in the artist’s “Trash Animals” series, moving beyond the depiction of solitary wildlife to explore the concept of generational inheritance. By pairing a mother and child, Bordalo II shifts the focus from the abstract threat of environmental degradation to the tangible responsibility of what one generation leaves behind for the next.
The Irony of Eternal Materials
To construct the installation, Bordalo II and his team spent approximately two weeks on-site, integrating four to five tonnes of discarded material into an engineered structural framework. The medium is intentionally provocative: the artist utilizes tyres, car parts, road barriers, decommissioned bins, and discarded playground equipment to replicate the fur, limbs, and faces of the great apes. As noted by the Singapore Art & Gallery Guide, the artist emphasizes a bitter irony in this process, using plastics—materials that persist for generations and eventually break down into microplastics—to form the likeness of a critically endangered species whose habitat is currently being destroyed by the very consumption habits these objects represent.
This contradiction is not merely aesthetic; it is structural. The young orangutan is depicted hanging from the arm of an excavator, a piece of heavy machinery synonymous with land clearance and deforestation. By incorporating this industrial element directly into the anatomy of the animal, the sculpture creates a visceral sense of precarity. The materials, many retaining their original colours and logos, remain recognizable even as they form the curves of the mother’s silhouette. This design choice ensures that the viewer cannot mistake the sculpture for a traditional bronze or marble monument; it remains, at its core, a pile of urban waste.
A Decade of Evolution in Urban Art
The ambition of New Life reflects a decade of growth in Bordalo II’s sculptural practice. GraffitiStreet, which has tracked the artist’s work since his 2015 “London Trash Rat” installation in Shoreditch, notes that while the fundamental contradiction of his work remains consistent, the narrative complexity has increased. The artist has now created more than 200 installations across 20 countries, having diverted over 115 tonnes of waste from landfills in the process.
The installation stands in the middle of Gardens by the Bay, a site defined by its fusion of nature and cutting-edge engineering. This setting is intentional, placing the orangutans at the intersection of a managed, lush environment and the harsh reality of urban development. The sculpture is not meant to be a permanent, static monument, but a temporary resident of the Bayfront Pavilion, occupying its space until the end of its four-year residency in 2030. It leaves the viewer with a stark reality: the waste is not disappearing; it is simply being reshaped into the ghosts of the species we are losing.
