alejandro durán

Alejandro Durán is an artist who transforms international trash washing ashore on Mexico's Caribbean coast into aesthetic yet unsettling artworks, awakening viewers to the threat of plastic pollution. His long-term project, “Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape,” uses photography and installation to explore the complex intersections of humanity and nature, highlighting the pervasive impact of consumer culture on the natural world. Durán also engages audiences through environmental, community-based art-making workshops and speaking engagements. As National Geographic’s Becky Harlan noted, “A gorgeous UNESCO World Heritage site has a serious problem with ocean trash, and artist Alejandro Durán wants to inspire us into action.”

Born in Mexico City in 1974, of Mexican and American descent, Durán currently splits his time between Brooklyn, New York, and Sian Ka’an, Mexico, where he continues to gather trash for his project. He holds an MA in Teaching from Tufts University and an MFA in Poetry from the New School for Social Research. As an educator, Durán has taught photography and video classes at The Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography.

Durán received a 2019 Creative Capital Award and served as Hunter College’s Artist-in-Residence in 2014-15. His work has been featured at the Weltkulturen Museum in Germany, the Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival in Japan, and Basta con la Plastica, Italy’s first Ocean Awareness Week. “Washed Up” has been published in National Geographic and Time Magazine, and appears in the books Art & Ecology Now, Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book, and the forthcoming The History of Art: A Global View by Thames & Hudson.

Mexican and American. Based in Brooklyn, USA.

Available Works

To learn more about Alejandro Durán, please visit www.alejandroduran.com