Pointing toward several gilded rooftops, she looked back at her art work. “We're just so excited that finally women will be on equal footing, if you will, with men," Renwick said, "because they've made so many important contributions to our legal community."Īs an installation crew stacked the head and bodice of "Witness" to the base of the sculpture, Sikander surveyed the silhouettes of buildings surrounding the park. Renwick, who not only works in the marble-faced Beaux-Arts courthouse, but also led the effort to commission the statue. "NOW" is particularly special to Justice Dianne T. ![]() “Aspects that are critical for me are basically how society perceives the idea of femininity in conversation with power, and how these social forces shape women's lives,” said Sikander. The name, Sikander says, not only calls attention to the present moment, but also nods to the National Organization for Women. The sculpture, called "NOW," is the first female figure to join the nine marble statues of historic and religious male legislators, like Confucius, Moses and Zoroaster, occupying the other plinths on the rooftop. But instead of floating in a skirt, it emerges from a pink lotus flower. Like its counterpart in the park, this figure is also glowing and golden. “The nature of this project is that it's offering many boundaries to kind of merge and melt and disappear,” Sikander said.Īlso included in "Havah.to breathe, air, life" is a second, similar sculpture installed on the rooftop of the adjacent Appellate Division Courthouse, first department of the Supreme Court of the state of New York. And every afternoon starting at 4:30 p.m., you can walk along the park’s leafy path to find an LED screen showing "Reckoning" (2020), a Sikander animation that looks like pulsating atoms moving through space, from which figures and nature emerge and disappear, evoking ideas of history and memory. An augmented-reality experience lets you use your smartphone to adorn the sculpture with cascading lotus petals. "Witness" is one part of a constellation of works included in Sikander's exhibition. “That's always important for outdoor public art, to have many different interpretations of the work on view.” "Multiple readings of one word, multiple translations - I think that's really apt for the project, because people will come to this piece and see many different things in the work,” Rapaport said. Brooke Kamin Rapaport, deputy director and chief curator of Madison Square Park Conservancy, said the word means "atmosphere" in Urdu, and "eve" in Hebrew, Arabic and other languages. Hugging the shell of the skirt, and visually moving viewers’ eyes around the figure, is the word havah in oversize Arabic script, its mosaic surface adding flashes of color to the golden artwork. ![]() The installation was co-commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy and Public Art University of Houston System. It's part of her new multimedia exhibition called " Havah.to breathe, air, life," which officially opens to the public today. The piece is the first large-scale public art sculpture Sikander has made.
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