![]() (2023) in Madison Square Park for Havah…to breathe, air, life, 2023 Photo credit: Yasunori Matsui On an adjacent lawn, from 5 PM to 10 PM daily, visitors can view Sikander’s Reckoning (2020), a video animation that unites the multiple elements in the exhibition with lush and vibrant depictions of a flowering landscape. Using the Snapchat app, visitors can scan a Snapcode to unlock Apparition (2023), AR experience that features a display of colorful particles and ghostlike images of the courthouse figure. With the help of Snap augmented reality technology, the sculpture is brought to life. This massive sculpture is adorned with a voluminous hoop skirt embellished with multicolor mosaics that are inspired by the courtroom’s stained glass dome ceiling. ![]() Shahzia Sikander, Witness (2023) in Madison Square Park for Havah…to breathe, air, life, 2023 Photo credit: Yasunori MatsuiĪcross from the courthouse at the 25th street and 5th Avenue entrance to Madison Square Park, you’ll find WITNESS, an eighteen-foot-tall sculpture. The courthouse statue is adorned with a collar reminiscent of that worn by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The placement of this piece, “both physically and symbolically elevates the female figure, putting her on a level plane with the traditionally patriarchal embodiments of justice and power.” It is titled NOW because Sikander wanted to express that “now” is the time when female rights and voices need to be acknowledged, especially amid the overturning of women’s reproductive rights. No one person or a human occupant on a plinth can represent multiple histories, ideologies, or experiences.” Both figures also sport their hair in braids shaped to resemble a ram’s horns which are a symbol of strength in Eastern and Western traditions. “The self-rooted body represents the resilience of women, who can carry their roots wherever they go,” Sikander writes in her artist statement, “The sculptures are temporary and not a fixed point in the landscape, nor symbolic of any fixed ideas or of a specific community. Instead of anthropomorphic hands and feet, their extremities end in a tangle of root-like curls. When asked to create a proposal for the courthouse sculpture, Sikander says in her artist statement that she “thought immediately of the courthouse’s proximity to the park and began sketching ideas about a possible relationship between the two locations.”īoth golden figures, NOW and WITNESS, have a stylized and enigmatic feminine form. Sikander drew inspiration for the three pieces in the exhibit, titled NOW, WITNESS, and Reckoning, from her time serving on the New York Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers in 2017. Havah, means ‘air’ or ‘atmosphere’ in Urdu and ‘Eve’ in Arabic and Hebrew. Sikander’s exhibit in the Flatiron District is her first major, site-specific outdoor exhibition in sculptural form.
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