The work of Meghan Price will be on view at the Canadian Cultural Centre Paris, France, as part of a group exhibition opening on November 15. Plastic Heart: Surface All the Way Through is what happens when scientists and artists create a project together to build relationships and impact change in society, museums, and industry on one of today’s vital issues: the impact of plastic pollution. The exhibition examines plastic in all its complexity, and the way in which artists have seized upon it and are now critically questioning its use.
Price's work, from the 2019 series entitled New Balance, is composed of deconstructed, used athletic shoes. Recalling striations of Earth’s crust, this work specifically references its uppermost layers as they are embedded with environmental pollutants including textile materials and residues from their manufacturing. The textile industry being the world’s second most ecologically harmful industry, positions the environmental significance of athletic shoes at odds with the aura of fitness with which they are marketed. Substituting stone with shoes and mimicking the patterns of Earth’s layered geological timeline, New Balance signals the disconnect between human pursuits of self-improvement through sport and our physical dependence on ecological health.
