Custom Recycled Gorilla Sculpture
-UPCOMING-
Artist: Joel Dean Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova
Location: San Francisco Zoo, San Francisco, CA
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Partners: San Francisco Zoo, Building 180
Photo credits: Render by Building 180
A large-scale silverback gorilla sculpture at the San Francisco Zoo & Gardens’ Skyline/Sloat approach would transform a highly visible but underdeveloped exterior threshold into a bold, welcoming gateway. Located near the zoo’s overflow parking lot, where asphalt and unmaintained edges currently define the arrival experience, the artwork would create a new point of connection for commuters, visitors, and the surrounding community.
Constructed from recycled and reclaimed materials, the gorilla deepens the relationship between public art, conservation, and collective responsibility. Its materiality offers a direct link between consumption, habitat loss, climate impact, and species survival, transforming discarded plastics and everyday objects into a commanding yet approachable form. As visitors look closer, recognizable fragments within the sculpture’s surface can reveal the story of its making, turning waste into a visible narrative of transformation and care.
As the zoo approaches its centennial, the work offers a powerful symbol of environmental stewardship and public engagement. Rendered as a friendly, recognizable silverback rather than an intimidating figure, the sculpture evokes the gorilla’s social qualities of protection, family, presence, and play. It has the potential to become not only a landmark, but a site of memory and return: a place where children, families, and visitors can gather, recognize their connection to the work, and see how collective action can shape something enduring, meaningful, and alive with possibility.
About the Artists
Joel Dean Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova are interdisciplinary sculptors and environmental advocates who specialize in monumental, site-specific installations created from reclaimed materials. Their collaborative practice is rooted in the belief that art can serve as a catalyst for environmental awareness and social change by making the invisible impacts of global consumption tangible. Joel Dean Stockdill is a master of large-scale sculptural form with a background in performance art and large-scale fabrication. He is the creator of the WildLife series, an international project that has produced 27 monumental sculptures across four continents, each constructed from locally sourced waste. Joel’s work focuses on the intersection of human industry and the natural world, often centering on species native to the regions where he works. Yustina Salnikova is a designer and sculptor who brings a specialized focus on environmental science and sustainable building practices to her artistic work. A self-described "recycled waste nerd," she was born in Kazakhstan and raised in California, where her proximity to the ocean deeply influenced her advocacy. Now based in Oregon, she continues to expand her practice into new materials and regional environmental narratives, blending technical precision with raw, reclaimed textures. Together, the duo gained international acclaim for Ethyl, an 82-foot-long blue whale commissioned by the Monterey Bay Aquarium for display at San Francisco’s Crissy Field. The piece holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest recycled plastic sculpture. For this project, the artists developed a custom, hand-processed recycling system to transform over 5,000 pounds of post-consumer plastic into mosaic-like "skin" panels—demonstrating that impactful, small-scale waste management is achievable outside of industrial systems. Their work has been supported by organizations like Building 180 and has been featured at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Santa Fe Community College. By transforming "trash" into monumental icons, Stockdill and Salnikova challenge viewers to reconsider their relationship with consumption and the lifecycle of materials.