"What We Leave Behind" is a photography exhibition by NC State University graduate student Oluwasola Israel Abimbola. This exhibition explores the visual and environmental legacy of plastics in contemporary life through a series of portraits and constructed scenes, juxtaposing plastic and nature within and around the human body in paradoxical ways.

A passionate environmental sustainability scholar, Abimbola draws on scholarship in visual rhetoric and environmental sustainability to develop photographic images that lead viewers to reflect on their relationship with everyday materials and the environmental consequences of thoughtless modern consumption. His work presents plastic not only as waste but as a lasting imprint of human behavior, an enduring record of what we consume, how we live and what we leave behind for future generations.

Abimbola is a Nigerian photographer, visual storyteller and communication scholar based in Raleigh. He is a master's degree student in communication at NC State, where his work bridges visual rhetoric, environmental communication and sustainable fashion. In Abimbola’s academic research and creative practice, he is interested in how images shape public meaning, memory and understanding in an increasingly image-saturated world.

Abimbola’s work reflects his encounters with the dangers of environmental waste, which shaped his awareness of sustainability. These experiences continue to inform his artistic language, which blends minimalism with symbolic intensity. He creates images that are both aesthetically striking and conceptually layered.

Abimbola merges scholarship with artistic practice, presenting photography as a catalyst for environmental awareness, cultural memory and imaginative possibility.