An ongoing project by Lin, which shows imaginary mutated creatures as a result of water pollution. [PHOTO BY XING YI/CHINA DAILY]

When Monika Lin isn't giving a lecture to her students, there's a high chance one might find her wandering the streets and construction sites in search of what most people would consider to be trash.

But to the clinical assistant professor of arts at New York University Shanghai, these salvaged items bear a much more poignant meaning-they are a means of raising important questions about the relationship between man and his impact on the environment, or problems related to society, culture and capitalism.

In her art installation River of Plastic, acrylic, styrofoam, Tyvek bags and cardboard fixtures form a landscape that is illuminated by lights every time a viewer approaches. The plastic, she says, is used to symbolize the realities of manufacturing and global consumerism-"a non-stop river of commoditized, disposable happiness". Created in 2016, the art installation was previously showcased at the Central Booking Gallery in New York in 2017.

Luise Guest, an art historian at the University of New South Wales, says Lin's work reflects what French philosopher Roland Barthes suggested in his 1957 book Mythologies that "the whole world can be plasticized, and even life itself".