thank you

Los Angeles, 2020-2021

Dimensions: 23’ diam. 18’ high (fully inflated)

Capacity: 10-15 people at a time

Thank You is an inflatable installation assembled from 1500 re-used polyethythene take-out bags.

Building on the techniques and morphology developed for Cumulus, this piece takes on a grander scale to accommodate a larger group of people, so it can serve as a location for performances and happenings.

On an immediate level, the choice of the ubiquitous thank you bags speak to our mindless accumulation of single use plastic. These bags have also become a cliché target of lame critiques of consumerism.

Rather than shy away from this toxic material and its hackneyed graphic design, this project tries to stretch the physical and symbolic dimensions of these banal objects, offering them in a new light.

By accumulating these bags, they are abstracted, their graphics transformed into a field of color, dissolved rather than concealed. Deemed essential but disposable, pervasive yet non-renewable, they embody many contradictions. As light filters through their polyethylene membrane, they reveal something about their origins and take on a petrolescent sheen, now appearing as oil slicks crinkling amongst the triangulated frames.