The Thinker’s Burden is a 6-meter-tall sculptural remix of Rodin’s iconic Thinker, which is being created for the INC 5.2 Global Plastics Pollution Treaty negotiations by artist and Young Leaders Award recipient Benjamin Von Wong, in collaboration with SLS Illusions.

In this version, the Thinker cradles a baby, sits atop Mother Earth, and is entwined in a giant strand of DNA, the building block of life, to highlight the growing health and environmental impacts of an unregulated plastic industry on both people and planet.

Crafted from papier mâché, wood, and steel, and covered in living vines, the sculpture will be slowly engulfed by a mounting wave of plastic waste throughout the negotiations — a visual metaphor for the toxic legacy being passed on to future generations.

This piece is a public call for world leaders to finalize an ambitious treaty with legally binding obligations that addresses plastic pollution, and the health harms it causes across its entire lifecycle - before it’s too late.

Learn more about the health impact of plastics here.