Life in the Anthropocene features a room-sized graph of the volume of Global Plastic Production (1950-2040), assembled with discarded plastics collected largely from the artist’s household, her office, and her neighbors. The original objects vary in color, texture, weight, purpose, and durability but are rendered monochromatic and ominous, revealing their fundamental nature as toxic petroleum waste. She confronts the viewer with the reality that we buy and discard a massive volume of plastic, and these molecules are now in our air, our water, our food and our bodies.

The paintings and the monochromatic waste sculpture in this installation create a sense of tension. Her paintings are colorful. They are visual poems connecting the natural world with human actions, the ceaseless flood of news, the procession of the seasons, the fragility of the planet, and human’s search for direction – a way forward.

Taina Litwak has a BFA in Printmaking and a BS in Biology. She recently retired from a long career as staff scientific illustrator with the USDA at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Her focus on science communication is a manifestation of her concern about the state of our planet’s ecosystem, while her paintings and installations are a more personal form of expression.

In 2023, Litwak began a series of installations that focused on plastic waste, presented at Artomatic in 2024, which evolved from an exhibition at the Washington Project for the Arts titled “The Ritz” in 1983. These installations incorporate a series of paintings begun in 2020 which express her concerns about climate change and biodiversity loss. Her work has been featured at group shows at the Touchstone, Foundry and Crows Nest Galleries, Maryland Federation of Art, Addison-Ripley, the Katzen Arts Center, and the Washington Women’s Arts Center.

I am an activist artist. My sculptures and installations focus on the modern ubiquity of plastics and electronics in every aspect of life. We pour staggering volumes of ever-diversifying plastics into the biosphere. The plastic molecules of your shampoo bottle, your cell phone case, will be in the food that your great-great grandchildren eat, in the water they drink.

My paintings employ harmonies of color and pattern as a lure, which on closer examination focus the viewer on the issues of biodiversity loss and climate change. I use elements of fallen leaves and animals cut from newspapers and maps. Headlines of loss and hope swirl. The elements of water and stone are often central to my work. The stones, solid and eternal, have been sculpted by water and time. When involving the sky, I focus on the fleeting qualities of dusk and dawn, moments of transition/transformation.

Artist Talk with Taina Litwak

Saturday, December 13, 3  pm

Taina Litwak will lead a gallery talk about her exhibition titled Life in the Anthropocene. In her exhibition, Litwack employs the use of discarded materials to make visitors aware of toxic waste and our responsibilities to the environment.

Free to the public (a donation of $10 is suggested)