The Frogs Are Croaking

It’s fun having brilliant friends; and all-the-more-so to have brilliant friends who can express their brilliance through talent. Jennifer Sohn is one of those special people.

This evening I was lucky to attend an art exhibition at SOMAarts Cultural Center, called “Blue Planet”. The show was the demonstrative element in a week-long conference dedicated to the ways in which art enhances our understanding and appreciation of the environment, and inspires activism on behalf of the ecological systems impacted by human activity. Jen’s latest work, Toxic Habits, a portion of which is pictured above, was featured in the exhibition.

The piece plays on a traditional biology lab archetype: the animal specimen preserved in a jar of formaldehyde. Jen’s favored medium is textile; and, for Toxic Habits, she stitched-together dozens of colorful fabric frogs. These are not healthy specimens, however. Each of Jen’s frogs displays the disfiguring effect of untoward genetic mutation. If frogs are a bellwether species, demonstrating early susceptibility to ever-increasing toxicity of our water and climate change, Jen’s frogs sound the alarm of environmental degradation.

Jen embalms her specimens in common two liter plastic soda bottles, rather than laboratory glassware, signifying the impact our unsustainable, convenience-craving patterns of consumption have on the broader environment. Describing the piece for the “Blue Planet” exhibition catalog, she notes that less than 25% of recyclable soda bottles are actually recycled; the remainder are left to contribute to our toxic landfills and even more environmentally harmful situations — like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Toxic Habits is a sad and eloquent reminder of the externalized costs of what we anthropocentrically — and ironically — refer to as a “high quality of life”.