Agora, High Line – New York City, New York
This series of nine artist installations along the High Line reflect on immigration, identity, and home. The exhibition runs April 2018 to March 2019. These pieces represent a valued addition to the ever-expanding public art program along the High Line. One might go so far as to interpret the High Line itself as a massive piece of performance art. The title of the show Agora is fitting. Historically the agora served as marketplace of the city, used for both civic and commercial purposes. Further broken down, the root meanings of agora are agorázô which means “I shop” and agoreúô which means “I speak in public.” Artists consciously or not incorporated both these meanings of shopping and speaking in public through their work.
The artists represent a diverse group of women, international, and indigenous talent. Many incorporate their unique identity and perspectives into the work. Linklater whose art explores the “relationship between indigenous people and museums” literally places the frame of a teepee, yet presents this as an art object. In doing so he eschews the notion of home, by translating the everyday into an object deserving of being curated. Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa takes the theme of home even more literally, with a bunk bed cast in aluminum. One is reminded how space is defined both by the art object, but also by the negative space that surrounds it.
Several of the installations are text-based or a combination of text and images. Christine Sum Kim utilizes American Sign Language in a billboard that rests just beyond the termination of the High Line. Interestingly, the duration of this piece on the card describing it would seem to indicate the billboard will survive after the Agora exhibition is over. Andrea Bowers Somos 11 Milliones connects with advocacy around DREAMers. The visual language is a bold block lettering borrowed from commercial signage with red letters overlaid with neon tubes. POPE.L employs similar materials for a decidedly different effect in Chmera, taking the technique further by inverting certain letters, juxtaposing front and back, and utilizing complementary colors of red and green. Finally, Sable Elyse Smith in C.R.E.A.M. riffs on the Hollywood(land) sign to reflect on the “segregated real estate development that was advertised by the original sign.” In all four instances commercial methods of advertising and marketing are elevated to the status of art. Individually and collectively they challenge viewers to look at both art and commerce with different eyes. Many capture the dual meaning of agora “to shop” and “to speak in in public” by using commercial visual language to convey messages of public import.
Timur Si-Quin takes this exploration further through art work “that posits advertising and commercial marketing as a result and extension of biology.” In surprising delicate and naturalistic forms, Si-Quin presents “aluminum casts of a burned tree branch from Pepperwood Preserve.” These are painted so as to resemble the charred branches they are based on. Here they rise from the High Line in a phoenix-like reaching movement towards the sky. Implicit in this work is a commentary on how commercial development in areas prone to fire is untenable.
Last, but certainly not least, is the work of Maria Thereza Alves. In A Ballast Flora Garden she explores plants derived from seeds carried in the ballast tanks of ships travelling to America over the past two centuries. Relying on experts in horticulture and also local history, she has identified and also “seeded” areas with various genus and species of plants. Similar installations were carried out in numerous other port cities. This work is a perfect metaphor for globalization and the exchange and transfer of product, or the inadvertent transfer of seeds. Jane Jacobs in the Economy of Cities identified the role that cities play in the combination of different varieties of seeds to produce hybrid lines. In that same spirit, all of these works combine together to help the public reflect on commerce and the urgent need to speak about topics that matter.
Agora is a group exhibition that looks at the role of art in defining, creating, and using public space. The exhibition takes its name from the ancient Greek word referring to the public gathering area that was the core of life in old city-states like Athens. For centuries, artists have used public locations – and the public in general – as the heart of for (sic.) their work. By transforming public places into theaters and arenas for performances and collective actions, artists mobilize a kind of collective voice of the people.
Marinella Senatore
GIVE YOUR DAUGHTERS DIFFICULT NAMES
Not reviewed.
Christine Sum Kim
Too Much Future, 2018
Located next to the High Line at 95 Horatio Street
In Too Much Future, artist Chrstine Sun Kim (b. 1980, California) pairs text with a rendering of the sign for the word “future” in American Sign Language. Typically, the sign for “future” is illustrated as a thin line. This mimics the hand as it moves away from the face in two arching gestures. Kim reimagines that line as a thick black mass in order to indicate multiple meanings – literal, conceptual, and emotional – that can be projected onto the word. For Kim, the same unpredictability that can make the future a source of anxiety can also create a sense of optimism.
Andrea Bowers
Somos 11 Millones/We Are 11 Million (in collaboration with Movimiento Cosecha), 2018
Neon and steel; 192 x 120 in.
Andrea Bowers (b. 1965, Wilmington, Ohio) is a Los Angeles-based artist working in video, drawing, and installation, combining art and activism to foreground the struggle for social justice. For the High Line, Bowers presents a continuation of her ongoing work supporting DREAMers, individuals who came to the United States at an early age without documentation, who have assimilated to U.S. culture, and who have been educated in U.S. schools (so-called because of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors or “DREAM” Act). Bowers invited the immigrant rights activist group Movimiento Cosecha to write a slogan in support of DREAMers, realized as a neon sign reading “Somos 11 Millones / We Are 11 Million,” which is the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
POPE.L
chmera, 2018
Neon and aluminum; 144 x 144 in.
Pope.L (b. 1955, Newark, New Jersey) is an artist working in performance, theater, installation, video, and painting. His works include physically demanding actions, as well as sculptures and performances that explore language, gender, race, ideology, and community. For the High Line, Pope.L presents a large neon sign that reads “RiGT TURN for REPARATIONS” in flickering red and green letters. The apparent typo and backwards letters are intended to make viewers read life differently. The red and green in his apparatus suggest the jolting stop-and-go vicissitudes of progress, love, and money.
Sable Elyse Smith
C.R.E.A.M., 2018
Aluminum light boxes and steel; 328 x 140 in.
Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986, Los Angeles, California) examines the complex language and emotional landscapes embedded in systems of surveilance and structures of constraint, and the often invisible ways in which they shape our minds and direct our bodies. For the High Line, Smith creates C.R.E.A.M. (titled after the Wu Tang Clan song), an altered replica of the Hollywood Sign that reads IRONWOODLAND – a reference both to the Ironwood State Prison and to “Hollywoodland,” the segregated real estate development that was advertised by the original sign. The piece draws attention to the contradictory nature of institutions that not only develop real estate, but prisons as well.
Marichen Danz
The Dig of No Body (soil sample)
Steel and resin; 36 x 24 x 68 in.
Mariechen Danz (b. 1980, Dublin, Ireland) researches representations of the body, investigating the way it has been given meaning in various cultures, epochs, and fields of knowledge. In her installations, performances and music, often in collaboration with other artists and musicians, the human body emerges as a contradictory structure and a scene of conflict – an utterly contaminated zone, both politically and historically. For the High Line, Danz presents a new iteration of The Dig of No Body, a sculpture that references anatomical learning models segregated into individual parts, like a life-sized soil sample in movable layers. The work evokes our changing relationship to the earth, as well as the popular contemporary name “Anthropocene,” which suggests humans’ creation of a new geological era.
Timur Si-Qin
Forgiving Change, 2018
Cast aluminum and paint; 89 x 81 x 121 in.
Timur Si-Quin (b. 1984, Berlin, Germany) creates artwork that posits advertising and commercial marketing as a result and extension of biology. Across his practice, Si-Quin works to combat essentialism – whether in branding, language, or nature itself. He often builds seemingly organic environments whose underlying industrial structures can be easily seen, thus calling into question the things we take for granted as “natural” or “unnatural.” For the High Line, Si-Qin presents Forgiving Change, aluminum casts of a burned tree branch from Pepperwood Preserve, which was the site of one of the many forest fires that crossed the west coast of North America in 2017.
Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa
Void ratio of a bunk bed, 2018
Cast aluminum; 35 x 51 x 98 in.
Nafus Ramirez-Figueroa (b. 1978, Guatemala City, Guatemala) creates sculptures, videos, and performances that explore absence, presence, and the way our bodies interact with the built environment. For the High Line, Ramirez-Figueroa casts a bunk bed in aluminum, referencing the fraternity of a shared space, while also evoking a sense of loss. The fragility of the structure reflects the precariousness of childhood, and in particular, the experiences of the children in the illegal orphanages that appeared in Guatemala during the civil war from 1960-1996. Specifically, the work is influenced by the Buddhist belief that “form is emptiness; emptiness is form,” and that all things are interconnected.
Duane Linklater
pêyakotênaw, 2018
Londgepole pine, paint, flagging tape, rope, and boulders; dimensions variable
Duane Linklater (b. 1976, Moose Factory, Canada) is an Omaskêko Ininiwak artist from Moose Cree First Nation. He explores the relationship between indigenous people and museums, especially the differences in how the two value indigenous institutions and art objects. For the High Line, Linklater presents a series of towering tripods that reference the elemental structure of teepees. Linklater describes the teepee as a form of provisional, mobile architecture that is set in contrast to the bombastic development happening throughout New York and along the High Line. The title of his piece, pêyakotênaw, comes from the Cree word for family, which is formed from peyak, which means number one, combined with otenaw, the word for city or town.
Maria Thereza Alves
Melilotus Officinalis, A Ballast Flora Garden: High Line, 2018
Maria Thereza Alves (b. 1961, São Paulo, Brazil) addresses the relationship between imperialism, conquest, and the erasure/silencing of indigenous people. A Ballast Flora Garden: High Line is one of three gardens that are part of MAria Thereza Alves’s Seeds of Change: New York – A Botany of Colonization, which unearths historical ballast sites and ballast flora that has traveled to New York City by trade ship ballast over the past two centuries. Earth, stones, sand, wood, bricks, and whatever else was economically expedient was used as ballast to stabilize merchant ships in relationship to the weight of their cargo. Upon arrival in port, the ballast was unloaded, carrying with it seeds native to the area where the ballast had been picked up. Over the past two centuries, more than 400 species of plants were brought over by ships and were growing on ballast grounds throughout New York, from where they have spread further since. To understand this history, Alves has worked with horticultural experts and local communities at Pioneer Works, the High Line, The New School, and Weekesville Heritage Center to research the ballast flora and the stories it tells about migration, commodification, and valuation. It is an ongoing investigation in numerous port cities realized previously in: Marseille, France; Reposaari, Finland; Liverpool, UK; Exeter and Topsham, UK; Dunkirk, France; and Bristol, UK.
