Gallery Artist Lauren Yeager featured in Everlasting Plastics at SPACES, Cleveland.
WHAT: SPACES announces the return of the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture Exhibition Everlasting Plastics to Cleveland
WHERE: SPACES 2900 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44113
WHEN: Public opening reception, Friday, September 26, 2025, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM Exhibition on view Sept 26, 2025 - Jan 17, 2026
SPACES is pleased to welcome Everlasting Plastics back to its Cleveland home. Originally premiering in the U.S. Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture, and then traveling on to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh in 2024, this compelling group exhibition brings together a diverse group of artists and designers to examine our complex relationship with plastic. Everlasting Plastics includes site-specific works by Xavi L. Aguirre (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Assistant Professor of Architecture); Simon Anton (Detroit-based designer); Ang Li (Northeastern University School of Architecture, Assistant Professor); Norman Teague (University of Illinois at Chicago, Assistant Professor in the School of Design); and Lauren Yeager (Cleveland-based sculptor).
Perfected in the United States in the early 1900s, petrochemical polymers known as plastics were embraced as a revolutionary material that protected the natural world and decreased socioeconomic barriers to accessing goods previously only available to the wealthy. Today, despite cultural attitudes towards disposability and evidence of toxicity, plastics are produced at alarmingly exponential rates making clear the urgency to reframe our approach to the overabundance of plastic detritus in our waterways, landfills, and streets. Nationally, Ohio is the second largest employer in the plastics industry, and given Cleveland’s location on the Lake Erie watershed, plastic’s influence is an unavoidable reality in our region.
Each work considers our relationship with plastics, encouraging discussion about the ways the material both shapes and erodes contemporary ecologies, economies, and the built environment, while also suggesting potential alternatives and necessary re-imaginings for the ways in which plastics are deployed. Rather than offering a straightforward critique, Everlasting Plastics considers the material's cultural pervasiveness and the entangled, often paradoxical connection we share with it.
Save the dates:
● Public Opening Celebration: September 26, 2025 | 6:00 - 9:00 pm
● A Plastic Homecoming: Dress Up. Show Up. Support Art. November 1, 5:00 - 10:00 pm. Tickets on sale now!
Learn more here.
