Robin Frohardt
Brooklyn, NY
Known for her rich aesthetic and highly detailed constructions, Robin Frohardt is an award-winning artist, puppet designer, and director living in Brooklyn, NY. Frohardt has a knack for taking a simple premise to an elaborate realization. Her rich imagination, unique sense of humor and stunning technical craft come together to create work that defies the conventions of traditional storytelling. Her original play The Pigeoning hailed by the New York Times as “a tender, fantastical symphony of the imagination,” debuted in 2013 and continues to tour at home and abroad and has been translated into German, Greek, Arabic and Turkish. In 2016 she received a Creative Capital Award for her new work The Plastic Bag Store, an installation and performance that takes place in a fake grocery store in a real storefront and addresses the long term impact of disposable plastic packaging. She developed the work through a DisTil Fellowship at the University of North Carolina in 2018. She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and the first artist in Residence at Olson Kundig, a renown design and architecture firm in Seattle.
From the Journal
The Plastic Bag Store
Robin Frohardt
Artist BioThe Plastic Bag Store appears to be any New York City grocery or discount store, complete with signage outside and aisles stocked with colorfully packaged products inside. However, nothing is actually for sale here except packaging itself, packaging packed inside itself, where despondent cashiers with blank stares are endlessly double, triple and quadruple-bagging these products. This vibrant installation will be the context for a narrative, woven throughout the store, performed by multiple puppeteers, and actors with original music. The darkly comedic tale explores such questions as: How will our descendants interpret, and misinterpret, our plastic refuse left intact thousands of years from now? Where does the human spirit exist and thrive in a world of disposability?
From the Journal
Inspired by the longevity of single-use plastic, Robin Frohardt has created an entire fake grocery store made of plastic bags she has collected over the years. Frohardt’s Creative Capital Project, The Plastic Bag Store opens at Times Square in New York, March 18. We spoke to Frohardt about the project.