Exhibition
Plastic in Paradise was the artist’s response to her moments as a youth, and moments as an adult. They were photographically created to represent what had either happened or were previous experiences. Some of the scenes were completely candid. Others were staged based on a fleeting moment, a scene based on the characteristics of the subjects the artist is photographing, places she had travelled to or references to art history and popular culture. Truth and fiction were thus woven together to create a narrative of both a real and imagined world. Helium balloons competed with coconut palms, plastic pool toys with beautiful landscapes — everywhere the factory-made intersected with nature.
Through these personal stories Bassett Blair highlighted the duality of plastic and paradise, and by doing so drew our attention to the complex relationship between the two.
About the Artist
Heidi Bassett Blair
b. 1969
Born in Toronto, Heidi Bassett Blair has a BA from McGill University and an MA from New York University; she also studied at Parsons Paris, where she worked as assistant to video-digital artist Peter Campus. Her work has won several prestigious awards, including the Jack Goodman Award for Art and Technology and American Photo’s Portraits and People award. Her work appears in many private, corporate, and museum collections and is represented by the Benrubi Gallery, New York. In 2015, NGCI held Plastic in Paradise: Scenes of Real Life Fictions, a solo exhibition of her series of the same name.
