Ana María Hernando: "To Let the Sky Know / Dejar que el cielo sepa"

Ana María Hernando, a multidisciplinary artist originally from Buenos Aires and now based in Denver, explores the intricate layers of women's identity through her art. Drawing from her upbringing in her parents' textile plant, she often incorporates small-gauge fabric netting into her sculptures, paying homage to her roots. Tulle, which is traditionally associated with enhancing feminine silhouettes and concealing women's bodies with tutus, petticoats, and veils, symbolizes femininity and mystery in Hernando's work.

 In her latest project, "To Let the Sky Know / Dejar que el cielo sepa," housed at Madison Square Park Conservancy, Hernando aims to infuse vibrancy and optimism into the winter cityscape with tulle sculptures of vibrant colors, representing hope, growth, and femininity. Inspired by Latin American textile traditions, including the embroideries of Buenos Aires nuns and the weavings of Peruvian women, her art celebrates the enduring contributions of women worldwide. Hernando's sculptures in Madison Square Park serve as a platform for reflection on the interconnectedness of women's experiences and the empowering force of community collaboration. This exhibit is the perfect opportunity to brighten a gloomy winter’s day and will be open through March 17th!

“Havah…to breathe, air, life” by Shahzia Sikander

As we kick off Women’s History Month, we could not be more excited about Shahzia Sikander’s outdoor multimedia installation “Havah...to breathe, air, life,” whose sculptures centered around themes of women and justice, a theme akin to our own ethos, are currently gracing Madison Square Park and atop the Courthouse of the First Department of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. A “citizen of the world”, Ms. Sikander who hails from Pakistan and lives in New York City received the prestigious United States Medal of Arts in 2012 and has been acknowledged for renewing interest in the Indo-Persian miniature form and revolutionizing the  feminist neo-miniature movement worldwide.

“Havah…to breathe, air, life” consists of two sculptures of women; Witness, which sits at the entrance of Madison Square Park and 25th Street, and NOW, which is perched atop the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court and is the first female figure to be installed there. With her limbs as tree roots, her hair braided and coiled like a ram’s horn, her head held high and eyes wide open, Sikander’s golden women sculptures encompass symbols of power, strength, durability, and femininity. Whereas “Justice” throughout history has been symbolized as a woman, blindfolded, and holding scales, Sikander’s allegorical women suggest a new vision of woman and power in the justice system. Complete with a decorative jabot at the neckline, a nod to the lace collar worn by the late, trailblazing United States Supreme Court associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Witness and NOW remind us to “reverse stereotypes about gender, race, immigrants, and the unfamiliar” as noted by the artist.

Brier Patch by Hugh Hayden

An unsettling assembly of school desks with branches growing from the surfaces is an unexpected sight in Madison Square Park. The installation by artist Hugh Hayden evokes in turn nostalgia, optimism, and foreboding. The desks, organized in neat rows like in a classroom, are disrupted by the twisting mass of branches that emerge from the seats of the chairs and the tops of the desks. Evocative of folklore stories like Br’er Rabbit and Sleeping Beauty, the canopy that forms could offer a safe place to hide, or prove to be dangerously prickly.

Point of Action

Point of Action by Studio Cooke John invites residents and visitors alike “to contemplate the experience of seeing one another—and being seen.” The installation consists of six-foot circles affixed onto the Flatiron Public Plazas that create nine “spotlights,” each with its own vertical metal lighted frame. Lights embedded on each metal structure illuminate and frame the viewer who can step into the spotlight and connect with viewers across the plazas. “We are at a threshold during this pandemic,” Nina Cooke John, Founder and Principal of Studio Cooke John, says. “Now that our eyes have been opened to realities that have been with us all along, how do we move forward? My hope is that Point of Action makes people think about how we connect to the people we see every day so that we can move forward together.” Point of Action is on view through January 1, 2021 in the Flatiron Public Plazas on Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd Street in Manhattan.

Monument

Monument is an installation by Polish-born American artist Krzysztof Wodiczko at Madison Square Park. Wodiczko collaborated with twelve refugees who have fled war and instability in their home countries and have been resettled in the US. The installation features the filmed likenesses of these refugees projected onto the 1881 monument of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, a Union naval Civil War hero. The artist chose the Farragut monument for this project to “compare how select individuals are lionized in wartime and others are overlooked.” With footage and audio from individuals from Africa, Central America, South Asia, and the Middle East, the bronze monument emerges as a “surrogate for refugees whose diverse plights, harrowing journeys, grueling fortitude, and quest for democracy have recently brought them to this country.” The twenty-five minute projection runs from 5pm to 8pm Monday to Saturday through May 10, 2020.

City in the Grass

City in the Grass by New York-based artist Leonardo Drew extends over 100 feet on the lawn at Madison Square Park and features a colorful and textured surface reminiscent of a Persian carpet. Using varied materials, Drew has created a sprawling artwork with abstract cityscapes beneath rising towers. The artist is known for manipulating natural materials that resemble found objects, and creates works that often address social concerns and injustices. This piece includes both domestic and urban motifs. “This is a symbolic and literal multilayered project,” Brooke Kamin Rapaport, exhibition curator and Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator of Madison Square Park Conservancy, said. “The artist builds layer on layer of materials while using the metaphor of a torn carpet as a complicated reference to home, comfort, and sanctuary.” While visitors are invited to walk on the carpet to get a closer look, when we visited the lawn was closed. But no worries, the original Shake Shack is nearby!

Full Steam Ahead

Artist Arlene Shechet has created a new site-specific installation at Madison Square Park featuring a series of new sculptures in porcelain, wood, steel, and cast iron installed around and within the emptied circular reflecting pool. Initially inspired by memories of a sunken living room in her grandparents’ apartment, Shechet wants visitors to step down into the reflecting pool to “linger and reflect.” In her sculptures for the installation, she uses forms that reflect her interest in historical decorative arts and references flora and fauna, including a lion’s head and paw, a bird’s colossal feather, and tree-like sculptures and branches. “My hope has been to reimagine the hardscape of the Park with delight and surprise,” Shechet says. “New Yorkers rely on the sidewalks, the pavement, and the street as the core of their urban lives. Full Steam Ahead becomes a lively and human amphitheater, softening the hardscape through sculptural intervention evocative of 18th-century garden landscapes.”

Delirious Matter

Delirious Matter by artist Diana Al-Hadid consists of six new sculptures in Madison Square Park. Al-Hadid, who was born in Syria and lives and works in Brooklyn, elegantly combines sculptures and plantlife to create a distinctive look that according to her is “a blend between fresco and tapestry.” Inspired by mythology, history, and, in one sculpture, an early Netherlandish painting, the pieces include two wall works combined with rows of hedges, three reclining female figures atop plinths, and a sculptural bust of a female figure on a fragmented mountain. Brooke Kamin Rapaport, deputy director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator of Mad. Sq Art, says: “Al-Hadid’s work summons sculpture and painting, architecture and literature in a beauteous, atmospheric narrative.” The installation will be on display through September 3, 2018.