The Thinker's Burden is a six-meter sculptural remix of Rodin's The Thinker by 📝Benjamin Von Wong, unveiled at the Place des Nations in Geneva in August 2025 during the INC-5.2 negotiations toward a Global Plastics Treaty.
In this version, the Thinker cradles a baby, sits atop Mother Earth, and is entwined in a strand of DNA — reframing plastic pollution as a public-health emergency inherited by the next generation. Built from papier-mâché, wood, and steel and covered in living vines, the sculpture was progressively engulfed by a mounting wave of plastic waste as the negotiations unfolded: more than 20 cubic meters of it, collected, cleaned, and tied on by dozens of volunteers and NGO partners.
Von Wong created the piece with Swiss fabricators SLS Illusions, support from the Minderoo Foundation, and more than two dozen community partners. According to Von Wong's studio, coverage reached 5.5 billion impressions across more than 2,200 news outlets, making it his most widely seen work to date.
Every day we fail to negotiate an ambitious treaty is another day we gamble with their health, their safety, and their right to a livable future.