Everlasting Plastics

The exhibition
Carnegie Museum of Art presents Everlasting Plastics, an exhibition that investigates our relationship with plasticity—both as a metaphor and material construction. The exhibition makes its North American debut in Pittsburgh following an inaugural presentation as the US Pavilion at the 18th International Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023. Through site-specific commissions by five artists, architects, and designers from the United States—Xavi L. Aguirre, Simon Anton, Ang Li, Norman Teague, and Lauren Yeager—Everlasting Plastics considers the ways these materials both shape and erode contemporary ecologies, economies, and the built environment. Originally commissioned for the inaugural presentation in Venice, the installations are adapted for the presentation at Carnegie Museum of Art, with the artists conversing with the museum’s collection and in a region known for its inextricable link to the petrochemical manufacturing of consumer goods. The pollution and waste from this manufacturing continue to be produced and passed on from Pennsylvania’s Beaver County cracker plant to the fracklands of the Marcellus Shale. The five projects expand ways of thinking, allowing for a more confrontational, tangible, social, and plastic approach.

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors will face Ang Li’s installation Externalities, a large installation revealing the hidden layers of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam that form the interiority of walls, bringing to light the material’s invisible yet critical presence in supporting our built environments. Using salvaged consumer material, Lauren Yeager’s Longevity consists of a constellation of everyday objects removed from their original contexts. By elevating waste into art, she challenges us to reconsider the ways we establish value. Norman Teague’s Re+Prise, a reinterpretation of traditional West African vessels through recycled materials, traces waste and production streams and critiques Western extractivism on a planetary scale which returns previously mined ore as refuse. Through a process of grafting plastic waste onto armatures, Simon Anton’s This Will Kill____ That creates a material technique that examines circular histories and reimagines possible futures for a world in which waste plastics are increasingly inseparable from the planet. Finally, visitors will encounter Xavi L. Aguirre’s PROOFING: Resistant and Ready, a time-based installation that aims to complicate our relationships with plastic-proofing materials. Appropriating theatrical scenography and queer club cultures, Aguirre illustrates how repellant architectural tactics can attract and envelop us, suggesting a collapse between protection and endangerment.

This exhibition is a continuation of the ongoing work at Heinz Architectural Center at Carnegie Museum of Art to address relevant issues about our built environment by reflecting on history, examining the present, and imagining possible futures. This presentation of Everlasting Plastics invites further investigation into the themes from the museum’s 2023 exhibition Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground, which explored how fossil fuel economies have shaped and disrupted cities, communities, and ecologies. By examining the full life cycle of plastics, from fossil fuel extraction to production, Heinz Architectural Center is furthering its commitment to present creative ways that contend with ecological breakdown, inviting museum visitors to reconsider their relationship with their surroundings.

Public opening
On March 9, 2024, from 3–6 pm, the museum invites visitors to celebrate the opening of Everlasting Plastics alongside the artists and exhibition curators with an afternoon of events exploring plastic; where it has come from, where it will go, and what it can become. Further details are available at carnegieart.org/series/everlasting-plastics-opening-celebration/. 

Curatorial team
The exhibition is curated by Tizziana Baldenebro, SPACES’ curator of special projects, Lauren Leving, curator-at-large at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, and assistant curator Paula Volpato. Carnegie Museum of Art’s presentation is organized by Theodossis Issaias, associate curator at Heinz Architectural Center, with Alyssa Velazquez, assistant curator of decorative arts and design.

Participating artists: Xavi L. Aguirre, Simon Anton, Ang Li, Norman Teague, Lauren Yeager.

Support
Everlasting Plastics was commissioned and organized by SPACES, a Cleveland-based nonprofit arts organization. 

Everlasting Plastics is made possible by The Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Support for Everlasting Plastics is provided by Ford Foundation, Cleveland Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, Alphawood Foundation Chicago, Graham Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Joyce Foundation, University of Illinois Chicago, UB Greensfelder LLP, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Beyer Family Fund, and Margaret Cohen and Kevin Rahilly.

The programs of the Heinz Architectural Center are made possible by the generosity of the Drue Heinz Trust.

Carnegie Museum of Art’s exhibition program is supported by the Carnegie Museum of Art Exhibition Fund and The Fellows of Carnegie Museum of Art.

Carnegie Museum of Art is supported by The Heinz Endowments and Allegheny Regional Asset District. Carnegie Museum of Art receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.