plasticheart

Iain Baxter& ////// Christina Battle ////// Sara Belontz ////// Leticia Bernaus ////// Josh Blackwell ////// Amy Brener ////// Sully Corth ////// Aaronel deRoy Gruber ////// Fred Eversley ////// Naum Gabo ////// Eva Hesse ////// General Idea ////// Kelly Jazvac ////// Woomin Kim ////// Kiki Kogelnik ///// Les Levine ////// Mary Mattingly ////// Meagan Musseau ////// Tegan Moore ////// Sky Moret-Fergeson ////// Claes Oldenburg ////// Terry O’Shea ////// Francoise Sullivan ////// Catherine Telford-Keogh ///// Lan Tuazon ////// Marianne Viero ///// Joyce Wieland ///// Nico Williams ///// Kelly Wood

Ahead of the promise of a nation-wide ban on single use plastics, this experimental exhibition examines plastic as art material, cultural object, geologic process, petrochemical product, and a synthetic substance fully entangled with the human body. The exhibition includes new commissions, historical and contemporary artworks that relate to plastic as a politically-loaded material, and investigations into the paradoxes of plastic conservation in museum collections. It also features data visualizations of a study conducted by the Synthetic Collective that provides a first-ever snapshot of post-industrial microplastics pollution on the shores of all the Great Lakes. This exhibition links scientific and artistic methodologies to show how arts-based approaches to thinking and working can make viable contributions to environmental science and activism.

Plastic Heart mobilizes practices of institutional critique and proposes an alternative method of exhibition development and presentation that addresses ecology and sustainability in content and form. This exhibition seeks to stimulate viewers to be active subjects and works to challenge the artist’s complicity within capitalist-colonialist models of exhibition making and experiencing. By acknowledging plastics as both lubricants of artistic, gallery, and museum practices and also as ‘wicked problems,’ the exhibition undertakes an auto-critique as an essential component of its making.

Synthetic Collective is an interdisciplinary collaboration between visual artists, scientists, and cultural workers. They work to sample, map, understand, and visualize the complexities of plastics and micro-plastics pollution in the Great Lakes Region. Synthetic Collective is Kelly Jazvac, Kirsty Robertson, Kelly Wood, Patricia Corcoran, Heather Davis, Tegan Moore, Sara Belontz, Lorena Rios Mendoza, Kathleen Hill, and Ian Arturo.