Museo Aero Solar – Amsterdam 2026
Created in collaboration with Aerocene Foundation, this city-wide collective artwork transformed used plastic bags into a large-scale inflatable structure, shaped through public workshops, community gatherings, and shared making across the city. Everyone was invited to contribute plastic bags, join workshops, and take part in the gradual construction of this evolving artwork.
About Program DIY kit Essay. Partners
Follow the entire journey: Instagram
About Museo Aero Solar
Rooted in ideas of ecological responsibility, collective care, and sustainable futures, Museo Aero Solar reimagined waste as a shared resource rather than something to discard. Plastic bags – objects designed for convenience and disposal – were transformed through simple, repeated gestures into a collective structure that carries social, environmental, and political meaning. Rather than treating recycling as a purely technical solution, the project approached it as an act of attention, collaboration, and imagination.
The collected bags became the raw material for a living archive that is both a social sculpture and an embodied collective journey. The project and its message grew through shared making, bringing together art, community, and environmental awareness through simple collective actions: cutting, taping, layering, drawing, and assembling. Every bag collected and every participant contributed to an evolving commons, building awareness around environmental issues while encouraging collective responsibility for our shared future.
Throughout July, August, and September, workshops and public moments connected public art, education, urban exploration, and community participation across the city. The workshops were hands-on and open to everyone, regardless of age or experience, with children warmly invited to participate. Across the season, the structure moved through Amsterdam, growing with each workshop, each contribution, and each encounter until its final public presentation in September.
Rather than presenting the environmental crisis from a distance, Museo Aero Solar worked directly with the material realities of everyday life, using what already exists in excess as its starting point. What emerged was not a permanent monument, but a fragile, temporary structure built through collective participation. It suggested that more sustainable futures may begin not with new materials, but with new ways of assembling, sharing, and caring for what is already present.
Images: Museo Aero Solar at Synergy Art Festival, Amsterdam, 2026. Photo by Bart Treuren.
How to participate
Museo Aero Solar grew through many small collective actions between July and September. Plastic bags collected across Amsterdam became the material for a living archive and a large-scale social sculpture that expanded with every contribution.
There were several ways to take part:
- Collect and donate used plastic bags at one of the drop-off locations.
- Visit the Visitor Centre at Mediamatic to learn about the project, contribute materials, and follow the construction process.
- Join a workshop to cut, tape, layer, draw, and assemble the structure alongside other participants.
Program Visitor Centre Drop-off Contact
Image: Museo Aero Solar Amsterdam, 2026. Photo by Bart Treuren.
Program
17, 18, 19 July | 14:00–18:00Mediamatic, Amsterdam
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24 July, 17:00–23:00Flevopark, Amsterdam
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4 September | 16:00-20:00Amsterdamse Bos
Image: Museo Aero Solar Amsterdam, 2026. Photo by Bart Treuren.
Visitor Centre
Mediamatic, Amsterdam
6 July – 15 August
Open every Wednesday and Friday, 12:00–18:00
In July and August, one of Mediamatic's greenhouses became the Museo Aero Solar Visitor Centre. Throughout the summer, the Museo Aero Solar cargo bike also travelled across Amsterdam, collecting plastic bags and bringing the project into neighbourhoods across the city.
In collaboration with:
Image: Museo Aero Solar Amsterdam, 2026. Photo by Bart Treuren.
DIY kit (for everyone who feels like a kid)
With our DIY kit, you can create your own 1×1 meter artwork from used plastic bags.
DIY kit (Nederlands)
For educators and teachers, Museo Aero Solar also offers a school programme kit. It includes an introduction to the project and a tailored programme for a creative afternoon at school, after-school care, or summer camp. Feel free to reach out for more information or questions.
School programme kit (Nederlands) Contact
Othering what remains
Essay by Rik Dijkhuizen
“By temporarily changing the trajectory of plastic bags, the project demonstrates that the way materials move through society is not inevitable, but shaped by stakes, choices, infrastructures, negotiations, priorities and forms of cooperation.”
In this essay, Rik Dijkhuizen reflects on the Amsterdam iteration of Museo Aero Solar, exploring what discarded materials can reveal about the systems and infrastructures that shape their circulation. Following the plastic bag from waste to collective artwork, the essay considers how collecting, making and collaborating can create temporary pathways where established systems fall short, and how these connections might invite us to rethink our relationships with resources, responsibility and the environments we inhabit.
Read the essay here (PDF)
Partners
Museo Aero Solar Amsterdam is made possible through the support of our partners:
- Location partners: Mediamatic
- Location partner: Amsterdamse Bos
- Collecting partner: Milieu Service Nederland
- Collecting & programme partner: Plastic Whale
- Drop-off location partner: Droppie
Image: Museo Aero Solar Amsterdam, 2026. Photo by Bart Treuren.