Less Is More is a project that critically examines the unsustainable cycle of over-consumption. It started as a response to the growing overconsumption in the globalised world and to long-distance shopping. “While many try to collect more products, others cannot afford basic necessities such as housing or food.
Through digital collages, drawings and vases, the project explores the psychological effects of over-consumption on self-perception and identity formation.
My work invites viewers to confront their relationship with consumption by highlighting the mass production of low quality, cheap items, shopping patterns and asking questions about what leads people to over-consume, the consequences of over-consumption and how the media influences our minds.
I draw inspiration from the theoretical concepts of sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’ and ‘kitsch objects’, Brickman and Campbell’s ‘hedonic treadmill’, psychologist Barry Schwartz’s ‘paradox of choice’, Wicklund and Gollwitzer’s ‘completion theory’, Thoreau’s critique of consumerism, consumer psychology studies, and discussions and interviews with people who experienced shopping addiction.
Throughout my project, I hope to promote sustainable consumerism by preventing waste, which could lead to a better environment for the planet, a better quality of life, well-being, and better quality products.
“This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this ‘cool’ smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures.