The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) has recently opened a new supermarket-style exhibit with products made using recycled plastic bags.
Created by artist Robin Frohardt and produced by Pomegranate Arts, the Plastic Bag Store is an immersive experience and art installation in a supermarket setting.
For the store, Frodhardt has hand-sculpted products like meat, dry goods, toiletries, cakes and sushi rolls using discarded plastic bags that have been thoroughly washed.
Subtitled “a tragicomic ode to the foreverness of plastic”, the exhibit is designed to address today’s culture of consumption and convenience, as well as climate concerns, through art and humour.
Addressing climate concerns
Frohardt has repurposed 2-litre bottles as “Plastic Dew,” orange tarp as carrots, plastic caps as “capperonnis” on fake frozen pizzas, and “free-range” plastic bags as a dozen eggs.
Also, the store can be transformed into an immersive cinema with performers, puppetry, shadow play and handmade sets to present “a darkly funny and often tender story about the enduring effects of single-use plastics”, says a press release.
“Mass MoCA’s presentation of the Plastic Bag Store marks the experience’s first engagement in a museum and its longest run to date,” said museum director Kristy Edmunds.
“Beyond the soaring spaces where ideas of scale can stretch out, Mass MoCA, at its core, is about an entrusted relationship with artists where going beyond the fenceline of the familiar is not only possible, it’s elemental.
“It is also crystal clear that Mass MoCA’s next 25 years must be grounded in durable and environmentally resilient systems.
“The manifestation of the Plastic Bag Store on our campus—in addition to its long duration and joy-inducing wit—opens pathways for learning and conversation in our community on reducing our collective environmental impact.”
The Plastic Bag Store, which premiered in Times Square in 2020, is open at Mass MoCA through 3 November.
“Artists like Robin have an artistic practice of responding to what’s happening in the world around them by designing familiar objects that have the power to draw audiences of all ages in, and inspire them to take action in their own lives and communities,” said Lisa Dent, Mass MoCA’s director of public programmes.
Images courtesy of Mass MoCA and Robin Frohardt
