20 Poignant Installations That Show All the Pain Our World Is Going Through

While time keeps flying and our planet keeps rotating, the amount of social and environmental issues keeps increasing. Sometimes it seems like these problems are unsolvable and endless. The good news is that more and more people are becoming aware of them. Many times it’s thanks to various artists whose pieces of art and various installations manage to capture people’s attention and make them muse upon their own behavior.

We at Bright Side appreciate people whose good initiative keeps good deeds on the go and we are eager to show you a set of installations that are able to convey a lot to people.

1. A dead-whale installation created by Greenpeace visually shows us the way plastic affects the marine world.

2. A trash wave was created by the Corona company for the World Oceans Day in London.

The sign below the billboard says, “This wave of waste contains the average amount of marine plastic pollution found on every 2 miles of beach in the UK.”

3. The Non-Violence sculpture in front of the UN headquarters in New York was created as a tribute to John Lennon after he was shot.

There are some copies of this sculpture around the world that continue to raise people’s awareness toward violence.

4. A German artist HA Schult creates human-sized Trash People made of used cans, electronic garbage, and other rubbish.

5. An artwork by British pop artist Allen Jones dedicated to sexism

6. This installation depicts all the pain and consequences of poverty in Africa.

7. John Dahlsen, the creator of this installation, collected thousands of flip-flops to create his bottle-shaped installation dedicated to environmental pollution.

8. A giant dying whale choking on single-use plastic was presented at the parade for the Viareggio Carnival in Italy to remind big corporations to break free from plastic.

9. A 26 foot-tall installation made of used clothing is meant to draw attention to the amount of clothing, totaling 10.5 million tons, discarded every year.

10. A display of hundreds of red shoes is meant to be a protest against violence toward women in Israel.

11. The Bottle Project created by Jana Cruder and Matthew LaPenta asks people to reconsider their attitude toward single-use-disposable plastics by creating huge inflatable installations.

12. Here’s another street installation that was built using discarded objects.

13. The 7 ft tall Gumhead sculpture was created to encourage people to place their chewed gum onto it.

14. The Plastic Pollution Coalition installed a sculpture showing dolphins wrapped in a 6-pack ring in Vancouver.

15. Giant fish made with plastic bottles are exhibited at Botafogo Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

16. Greenpeace activists in Rome created this amazing artwork as a reminder of what’s at stake if we don’t break free from plastic.

17. An installation of 1,000 casts of Russian, German, and American combat helmets from WWII, which also represent turtles, was created by French artist Rachid Khimoune to denounce global violence.

18. These whales might find less plastic in the center of Zagreb, Croatia than in the sea.

19. A statue depicting a plastic-throwing dragon is set up in Brussels in front of the European Commission to demand an end to the use of disposable plastic.

20. A plastic trash whale jumping out of the canal and made of 5 metric tons of different types of garbage was installed in Bruges, Belgium.

Bonus: Monuments get updated and adjusted to the new environmental conditions too.

Environmentalists wearing mock gas masks protest by putting a mask on the face of the sculpture Mujer con Fruta.

A statue of a mermaid, the symbol of Warsaw, wears a mask during smog alert in Warsaw, Poland.

What meaningful art installations are there in your city? We would be glad to hear from you in the comments!