agustine zegers: A toxin threatens, but it also beckons
September 23–December 13, 2025
UIC Gallery 400
It’s nearly impossible to escape plastic usage. While the correlation between plastics and harm to human organs continues to be studied, our bodies and environment absorb and accumulate plastics in catastrophic ways. For A toxin threatens, but it also beckons, Chicago-based artist agustine zegers questions the aliveness of everyday toxins and our bodily porosity to them through the lens of single-use plastics. Within the exhibition, by-products of fossil fuels, including paraffin, polymers, and polyethylene (the most mass-produced plastic), are fragmented and recontextualized through visual and olfactory means. “Plastic brings a noxious pleasure into our everyday lives, one that binds us with extractivism through its protective sheen,” zegers says. zegers presents new, small-scale works that expand upon the desire and abjection of the polymers that surround and compose us. Polymer puddles with microplastics adhere to windowpanes. Found plastic bottle caps are filled with fragrance meant to resemble the intense scent of petroleum extraction in a landscape.
The exhibition borrows its title from theorist Mel Y. Chen’s essay “Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections,” which delves into the dynamics of human-generated toxicity and biopolitics—the connection between life and political power to govern individuals and populations. zegers stages the exhibition as a petri dish, inviting close inspection of the production and consumption of polymers through sight and smell.
September 23–December 13, 2025
UIC Gallery 400
It’s nearly impossible to escape plastic usage. While the correlation between plastics and harm to human organs continues to be studied, our bodies and environment absorb and accumulate plastics in catastrophic ways. For A toxin threatens, but it also beckons, Chicago-based artist agustine zegers questions the aliveness of everyday toxins and our bodily porosity to them through the lens of single-use plastics. Within the exhibition, by-products of fossil fuels, including paraffin, polymers, and polyethylene (the most mass-produced plastic), are fragmented and recontextualized through visual and olfactory means. “Plastic brings a noxious pleasure into our everyday lives, one that binds us with extractivism through its protective sheen,” zegers says. zegers presents new, small-scale works that expand upon the desire and abjection of the polymers that surround and compose us. Polymer puddles with microplastics adhere to windowpanes. Found plastic bottle caps are filled with fragrance meant to resemble the intense scent of petroleum extraction in a landscape.
The exhibition borrows its title from theorist Mel Y. Chen’s essay “Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections,” which delves into the dynamics of human-generated toxicity and biopolitics—the connection between life and political power to govern individuals and populations. zegers stages the exhibition as a petri dish, inviting close inspection of the production and consumption of polymers through sight and smell.
Photos by Jonas Mikowsch Müller-Ahlheim.