Barbara Cooper

Anthropogenic Life Forms

November 14, 2026 - January 9, 2027
Opening reception November 14, 2026, 1 - 3 pm
Artist talk December 5, 2026, 2 pm

OS Projects presents Anthropogenic Life Forms, an exhibition of sculptures by Chicago artist Barbara Cooper. The show opens on November 14, 2026 and continues through January 9, 2027. The public is invited to meet the artist on Saturday, November 14 from 1 – 3 pm. Cooper will also give an artist talk at 2 pm on Saturday, December 5.

Barbara Cooper’s obsession—and horror—is with microplastics, now found in all parts of the environment, including our air, water, and food. The artist started focusing on plastics after learning about plastiglomerates, a hybrid rock made from plastic debris fused with natural materials that will geologically define the Anthropocene epoch.

Cooper’s sculptures refer to human body systems that allow us to absorb oxygen and nutrients but have also been found to harbor alarmingly large quantities of microplastics. The sculptures are sewn from aluminum window screening, stitched like surgical incisions. Plastic water bottles picked up off the streets of the artist’s neighborhood are manipulated to fit into the screen forms, then coated with layers of paper pulp and beeswax, merging the industrial and the organic and mirroring how plastics have become enmeshed with all living systems. The resulting “life forms” bear proof of a society and culture that refuses to think about where material goes after we no longer have use for it.

Author and curator Giovanni Aloi describes Cooper’s sculptures as “as fossils recording the consequences of an age unable to control its appetite.” By transforming refuse that cannot biodegrade, the artist highlights not only the aesthetic tension within the ugly and discarded—creating jewels that hold the poison of our epoch—but also the deception that enables us to keep producing and using these toxic materials with accelerating intensity.

About the Artist

Barbara Cooper works in sculpture, drawing, and public art, utilizing diverse media such as wood, metal, paper, glass and found objects. Additional projects include gardens and structures for dance and theater. Her work is biomorphic in style and process driven, growing from the inside out. Because issues of sustainability and an ecology of wholeness are central to her art practice, she uses repurposed materials in her projects whenever possible.

A graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Cleveland Institute of Art, Cooper’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Racine Art Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Illinois State Museum, among others. She has participated in numerous residencies and fellowships, both in the US and internationally, and has used them as opportunities to research and engage with new environments and geographies.