The Backstreet Boy

Photographed by: Joshua Allen Harris

Despite the fact my iPod is a never-ending loop of rap music and I have an unhealthy obsession with street art, I still have about as much street cred as Mary Queen of Scots.

One of my favourite street artists would have to be New York's Joshua Allen Harris, whose trash bag animals take unassuming plastic rubbish bags strewn along the streets and turns it into something beautiful, most notably a polar bear.

As a symbol of impending climate change, these trash bag polar bears inflate and deflate with the passing subway trains beneath the city, coming to life and then lifelessly collapsing. The street art makes a statement on global warming as the figure of the majestic polar bear inflates into life and dies as its source of air dissipates. Many New Yorkers have commented on how sad it is to watch the life-cycle of the polar bear; dying over and over, paralleling the issue of climate change directly affecting their habitat.

You know when you’ve walked the same way home a hundred times and everything is so familiar that you stop noticing anything at all? What I love about Joshua’s sculptures is that they make the everyday extraordinary. Disguised as mundane rubbish lining the streets, before inflating into something as whimsical as the Loch Ness monster or a centaur . 

Joshua Allen Harris’ work has in a sense become an unofficial tourist destination. As onlookers post footage of the artwork on social media, an ensuing flood of people emerge from all corners of the internet. I don’t care if you’re a 6-foot-10 Compton Crip who thinks prison is relaxing, the momentary life-cycle of the plastic bag creatures will undoubtedly captivate your heart and imagination on New York’s city streets (with the reassurance that this will get tons of likes on Insta).

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