Saki the Artist believes that art has a job: to fight against waste. In her studio, leftovers from laboratories pile up like souvenirs of an industry that doesn’t think about tomorrow – pipettes, gloves, petri dishes. Things that would otherwise end up in black trash bags become dresses and installations. The artist, who moved from California to Vienna in 2023, combines her biotech past with creativity. It’s not about beauty for her. It’s about reimagining science in a more sustainable way.
Saki talks about plastic waste and climate change like someone giving a eulogy – personal, direct, no polite small talk. She knows the problem from experience. For seven years, she was part of the biotech world, where sterile disposable gloves and fresh pipettes are treated like sacred objects until they’re thrown away. Her efforts to change this back then failed. Now, she’s making a difference by showing how lab waste can take on new forms.
„For most people, it’s just plastic trash,” she says. „For me, it’s material.” She doesn’t just say this, she lives it. Through „Green Labs Austria,” she works with researchers at ISTA in Klosterneuburg to make lab work greener. What’s left over there is transformed in her studio. Disposable gloves turn into dresses, pipettes become jewelry details, polystyrene finds a new form.
Her perspective on waste stems from her childhood in San Francisco. Her parents, Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong, had little money. „We never wasted anything. Not a grain of rice was left on the plate,” she recalls. Conserving resources wasn’t a virtue; it was just daily life. That habit stayed with her, whether she was studying molecular biology, playing piano, or running a vegan bakery.
Later, in Los Angeles, she designed stage outfits for glam rock bands and drag queens – clothes made to reveal more than cover. Even then, fashion wasn’t just textiles to her. It was a stage for personalities. Now, she sews stories out of plastic waste. For the Vienna Science Ball, she created a dress from 397 disposable gloves.
In 2025, she’ll make a statement again, this time in an outfit made from 397 pipettes. „Vienna is the perfect place for this message,” she says. Between ballroom dances and research labs, she’s found the stage she needs.
Saki’s art doesn’t preach; it provokes. She wants change. She wants this throwaway world to reinvent itself. What others throw away becomes her answer to how things could be done better.