Waste not: Mina Loy’s late assemblages and materialities of aging

This article examines how Mina Loy’s late assemblages relate to a “Materialities of Age and Aging”. Drawing on material gerontology, I analyse how Loy's use of found materials, including cardboard, paper, tin cans, and metal, act as “co-formations” in the artist’s later life. As such, this essay demonstrates how physical things are active agents in the complex aging relationships enacted between people, objects, and places. The first part examines Loy's Bowery period (1940s-1950s), arguing that her poetry and assemblages directly engage with material culture and the reciprocity of touch. Second, I turn to Loy’s less-examined Aspen assemblages (1950s-1960s), which use tin cans and metal objects as art materials that have their own material aging processes. In scavenging the streets of New York and Aspen to craft three-dimensional constructions, Loy chose materials with alternative lifespans, inviting viewers to contemplate temporality, aging, and regeneration. This essay argues that Loy's reuse of discarded materials challenges dominant decline narratives associated with aging and obsolescence.