In her 2000 documentary ‘The Gleaners and I’, Agnes Varda highlights the sense of ownership and identity people experience in relation to their own and others’ waste.
After Varda, Kain’s ongoing ‘Gleaning’ series observes consistent and irreconcilable attitudes people hold towards the storage or disposal of liminally-useful objects (such as food containers and furniture), especially in semi-public spaces.
The object and the user leave small but distinct impressions upon each other. Anxiety around the presence of waste that has expired its primary use-value is usually amplified by proximity to the user.
Kain gleans for images of these objects with her camera in the vain of Varda’s gleaners. At its core, this series studies human-object relationships, liminality, and materiality.
Stirling Kain 