Current Perspectives: Robin Frohardt

Join us at the Kansas City Art Institute for a lecture by Robin Frohardt. Robin Frohardt is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist known for her rich aesthetic and meticulous constructions that blend puppetry, film, theater and sculpture into richly detailed worlds. Her immersive, narrative-driven projects use recognizable materials—often trash—to transform mundane objects into poignant critiques of consumerism, capitalism, and environmental catastrophe. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, she’s also received the Creative Capital Award 2016, the Herb Alpert Award 2024, and multiple Jim Henson Foundation Grants. Her films have been featured at prestigious festivals, including Telluride Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, where she won the Ellen Award for Artistic Excellence, and the DC Environmental Film Festival, where she won the Audience Award.

This event is free and open to the public.

Robin's first full-length play, The Pigeoning, debuted in 2013 to critical acclaim, hailed by The New York Times as “a tender, fantastical symphony of the imagination.” The play follows Frank, an office worker obsessed with safety, order, and a conspiracy he believes is led by pigeons. Her follow-up project, The Plastic Bag Store, weaves puppetry, humor into an immersive, multimedia experience set in a fake grocery store. Using satire to critique the culture of convenience and single-use plastics, the installation premiered in Times Square in 2020 and was included in the New York Times’ Best Theater of 2020. The work has since toured Los Angeles, Chicago, Adelaide, and Austin, and recently completed a six-month run at Mass MoCA.

Header Image: “Plastic Bag Store” an art installation and immersive film experience

The Plastic Bag Store is a public art installation and immersive film experience by Brooklyn-based artist Robin Frohardt that uses humor, craft, and a critical lens to question our culture of consumption and convenience — specifically, the enduring effects of our single-use plastics. The shelves are stocked with thousands of original, hand-sculpted items — produce and meat, dry goods and toiletries, cakes and sushi rolls — all made from discarded, single-use plastics in an endless cacophony of packaging.