DANIEL
LANZILOTTA
Environmental Artist, Activist, Cultural Storyteller
ABOUT
THE MOMENT
The idea that would shape Daniel Lanzilotta's work began on a beach in Biarritz, France.
Walking along the shoreline with his young son, Daniel encountered a landscape littered with plastic debris. Bottle caps, fragments, netting, containers—ordinary objects that had been purchased, used, and discarded.
But none of them disappeared. People had just stopped looking.
That realization changed the way Daniel saw waste—and eventually, the way he saw everything that gets dismissed as having no further value. For nearly thirty years, he has been looking again.
THE VISION
Daniel's work is grounded in a simple conviction:
Nothing and no one is disposable.
A piece of plastic can be dismissed as trash. A neighborhood can be overlooked. A story can disappear from collective memory. A culture can slowly become invisible.
Daniel sees a connection between these forms of disappearance.
His response is twofold: restore what has been dismissed and bear witness to what has been damaged.
THE ARTIST
Daniel works with plastic debris gathered from shorelines, waterways, streets, and other environments. He cuts, molds, welds, assembles, and recombines these materials into sculpture, installations, and wearable art.
He calls this practice non-extractive art.
The materials are not simply raw ingredients. They are evidence.
A single bottle cap is easy to overlook. Hundreds or thousands assembled together become something else: a physical record of consumption made impossible to ignore.
Daniel's work uses beauty as an invitation—but beauty is not the destination.
His work asks a harder question: Why did we make so much of this to begin with?
THE RESTORER
Daniel's instinct to look more closely extends beyond discarded materials.
Born and raised in the Bronx, with Sicilian American, Palestinian, Arabic, and Egyptian heritage, he grew up with an appreciation for food, materials, resourcefulness, and the knowledge passed from one generation to another.
That history informs his practice. He is interested in what happens when we look closely enough to recognize value where others have stopped looking.
THE WITNESS
Daniel's work is also a form of testimony. The plastic he collects has a history. It came from somewhere, was used for something, and ended up somewhere else.
By bringing those fragments into the gallery, classroom, lecture hall, or public space, Daniel asks audiences to confront the physical consequences of a culture built around consumption.
His art doesn't simply tell us that plastic pollution exists.
It makes the evidence visible.
THE STORYTELLER
Daniel's practice extends into cultural storytelling through his work as a lecturer, educator, and host of BronxNet's Artivation TV: Artist Art Activism.
As program host, Daniel speaks with artists, activists, and cultural figures whose work challenges the status quo and expands our understanding of community and social change.
For Daniel, environmental stewardship and cultural memory are connected by the same question: What happens when we stop looking?
THE WORK CONTINUES
Daniel has exhibited and presented his work nationally and internationally and has spent nearly three decades developing a practice that brings art, environmental awareness, cultural memory, and activism into conversation.
He doesn't ask audiences simply to recycle more. He asks them to go further upstream.
Consume less. Look closer. Question what you've been taught to value—and what you've been taught to throw away.
Nothing and no one is disposable.
Look again.
