This artist turned seaweed salad into living algae sculptures that breathe in CO2

When Vladimir Kanic first came to Canada from his native Croatia, he didn't intend to become a sculptor. A filmmaker and video artist with a computer science degree, Kanic came to Toronto, in part, to do an interdisciplinary masters at the Ontario College of Art and Design, but also because he was, in his own words, "bored with Europe."

Unfortunately for him, he arrived just a few months before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that by March 2020, he was trapped inside a new apartment, in a new city, in a new country, with a lot of time on his hands — and in possession of a few boxes of seaweed salad from a nearby grocery store. He says he "went into hyper mode" and began experimenting with different materials he had at home, including the salads.

Kanic grew up surrounded by algae. Before he was a filmmaker or a computer scientist, he was freediving off the Croatian coast. During the pandemic isolation, he began processing the algae, turning them into biopolymers, also known as bioplastics. Gradually, as he experimented, he began turning the biopolymers into sculptures. He says that in some of his early works, you can still see the sesame seeds that were in the salad. He starts by cooking the algae, which he now grows himself, until it turns into "a really huge sheet of wet mush."

"It's really not comfortable to touch," he says. "It's kind of a gel."

From there, he shapes it as it dries, although he says he only has about 20 percent control of the end result.

"The forces of physics shape it," he says. "It's kind of random art. You never know what it's going to grow out of it… I always say it's like the art is always there, right? I kind of scrape off the bits and pieces."

"The sculpture grows based on the amount of spectators and the amount of breaths you give to the sculpture," he says. There are 40 to 60 liters of algae per sculpture. That's equivalent to, let's say, 400 trees. That is what my research showed. And they perform this function in addition to being a piece of work."

Kanic's work has made him the recipient of this year's Career Launcher award from the Artist Project, a mega-show featuring over 200 independent artists, currently taking place at the Better Living Centre on Toronto's Exhibition Grounds.

Kanic says he wants his sculptures to inspire audiences to think differently about the seemingly constant waves of bad news that we all receive every day, particularly around the environment.

"We are bombarded by this constant negative stream of news," he says. "The planet is going to shit — this crisis, that crisis. But people, when they see my artwork, they feel kind of free to engage in deeper conversations about life, micro-organisms, biology, architecture. They feel super liberated to talk about climate change, right? They can say 'This is what I think." and it's not a deconstructive conversation or aggressive conversation. So I think of [the sculptures] as a beacon of hope, where they can inspire communities to actually resolve some stuff that is not being resolved."

Eventually, Kanic wants to scale his sculptures up into 30-foot-high public art pieces. He says that when he first started making them, he could barely keep a 12 by-nine-inch piece from crumbling, but this show features pieces that are up to nine feet tall. 

"Imagine like 20, 30 foot large sculptures that can produce oxygen — clean toxins from the air [on a level] equivalent to thousands of trees," he says. "Let's put them in Toronto as a gathering point for communities, and to show that we can change, there is a better future."

Kanic's work will be showing as part of the Artist Project at the Better Living Centre in Toronto (195 Princes' Blvd.) until April 16.