Color of Light, an installation art made from plastic by Monika Lin, in Yangjiawei City Park in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. [PHOTO BY XING YI/CHINA DAILY]

Born in New York to a Chinese father and a Swiss mother, Lin pointed out that her interest in promoting sustainability stems from her time in high school when she had a teacher who was passionate about reaching out to students and helping them with their needs.

"He tried to make a difference in the students' lives regardless of whether he was asked to or not. By this example, he taught me that doing something was always the right thing to do. It takes courage. We often tell ourselves, it's not our business or (that) someone else will do it," says Lin.

Inspired by this teacher, Lin started thinking about the disparities in economics, gender and race, and realized that it was necessary to engage with the communities around her to bring positive change. This soon led to her founding a nonprofit artists organization in San Francisco in 1996 that conducted outreach programs in arts education, hosted exhibitions for artists as well as provided artist mentoring.

By the time she moved to China in 2006, her ideas about ecology had expanded to consider how the systems of capitalism and politics impacted the environment in specific ways.

"My work is not about activism but about making work that is engaged in the present and with the world around me. I think the defining issue of our time concerns the Anthropocene-our impact as humans on the Earth," she says.

"Tracing this impact backward through the trajectories of human interactions in the political, economic and social contexts leads me to develop work about those various concerns. I hope that my work will open up a dialogue about these concerns."

Lin, an American, is currently working on a project that delves into the relationship between society and water pollution caused by plastic waste. In this artwork, latex is used to create what she calls "grotesque but at the same time very beautiful" creatures that have been mutated by polluted water. These creatures will then be placed in glass globes and filled with water collected from around the city. The artwork will also be illuminated with black light to create a mysterious feel that urges viewers to contemplate the effects of water pollution.

Through this project, Lin says she hopes people can rethink the ways they are using plastic and that would encourage greater levels of sustainability in society.

"Many people think that they cannot do anything about plastic pollution because it is such an indispensable material in daily life. But there are ways to reduce or reuse plastic. We can also look for alternatives such as bio-degradable materials," she says.

"There are people who have said that my artwork has definitely made them think twice about the issue. Some have even made the commitment of not buying bottled water anymore."A