A grocery shop that leaves you speechless. From New York to Los Angeles, an American artist, Robin Frohardt opens the doors of her original store.
We are walking in the Big Apple and suddenly we find ourselves in front of a shop that at first glance looks like a classic grocery store, with fruit and vegetables displayed in boxes, shelves of coke and coloured cereals. Cupcake display cases and magazine stands. In reality, however, if you go into this shop you realise that everything on display is not what it seems, because it is actually made of plastic, everything is made of shopping bags, bottles and recycled caps. This is the installation and performance by artist Robin Frohardt, “The Plastic Bag Store”.
The first version of this store would make its appearance with a live puppet show on 18 March 2020. The Covid19 pandemic postponed it until October, but in the meantime the show has become a film, and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA today helped bring the entire installation to Los Angeles. The transformation from live performance to film project has made it cheaper to tour the installation, which has already been to Australia in February, with more stops to be announced in the coming months.
The Plastic Bag Store seems like a classic illumination born out of the observation of everyday objects and the experiences of daily routine. In a recent interview Robin Frohardt explains that when you go shopping, at the supermarket they bag what is already bagged, for transport of course, but the idea in general is a bit crazy.
Robin Frohardt goes on to point out something that the whole world ignores – plastic does not biodegrade, it photodegrades. So a container or any object used 20 years ago is still somewhere. Sad yes but also fascinating, it is on these things that the American artist has developed her shop, a place that tells a story.
We hope that art in this sense can contribute to a real change towards one of the problems afflicting the planet.
