Currently on view until September 5th, 2026 at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York City is artist Megan Ellen MacDonald's solo exhibition, "Remind Me to Forget."

In her newest paintings, MacDonald looks at the increasingly blurry line between an object and a companion, and the surprisingly emotional relationships we develop with the things we keep in our pockets, on our desks, and in our screens.

MacDonald has long been interested in the still life and its history as a genre concerned with beauty, impermanence, and mortality. In remind me to forget, she brings those ideas into the present, filling her paintings with objects and imagery that feel both personal and strangely familiar. References to pop culture, digital life, and her own studio appear alongside more traditional symbols of life and death. Objects float and overlap, resulting in a visual limbo where the real, imagined, and the artificial all sit comfortably together.

The title, remind me to forget, speaks to the constant push and pull of digital life. A notification arrives and, almost instinctively, we reach for it. Messages ask for a response. Unprompted photos pop up, bringing someone back to the forefront of our mind. We are constantly reminded to look, respond, remember, and stay connected.

Rather than offering a straightforward conclusion, remind me to forget leaves room for uncertainty. MacDonald’s paintings are invitations to linger with the things that are difficult to define: affection for an object, grief for something that never lived, and the possibility that the technologies we’ve invited into our lives might be changing us in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

Megan Ellen MacDonald’s paintings challenge the pre-established aesthetic hierarchy by creating a visual language out of things considered both diminutive and feminine. Her still-life arrangements - first created using 3D software and "documented" as paintings - depict intimate and destructive relationships between objects as an exploration of what it means to embrace both femininity and power.

MacDonald, who is currently based in Toronto, graduated from OCADU in 2013 and has exhibited work in Canada and the US.