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High Line Art Announces Artworks for its Fall 2023 Program
August 3, 2023, 5:34.02 pm ET

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Photo: Karon Davis, Curtain Call. Courtesy of the artist.

High Line Art, which organizes public art programming and installations displayed along the High Line, today announces its commissioned artworks and film programming for Fall 2023. High Line Art collaborates with an international array of artists— both emerging and established—to produce new artworks inspired by the unique setting of the park, presented on a rotating basis. These are among the new exhibitions.

Cosima von Bonin

WHAT IF THEY BARK?
On the High Line at 17th Street
September 2023 – August 2024

Cosima von Bonin brings her ongoing work WHAT IF THEY BARK? to the High Line, installing a group of anthropomorphic fish sculptures above the park’s iconic 10th Avenue Square. Assembled like a military band ensemble, the fish wear theatrical costumes, play musical instruments, and hold checkered missiles. This humorous composition recalls the statue arrangement of ancient Greek temples, but instead of gods and heroes here the artist places sea creatures on land interacting with one another and doing human activities such as playing music. The figures adorn the top of the railing of the Sunken Overlook as if playing a concert for visitors resting on the seating steps below, adding a playful element to the striking view up 10th Avenue.

Zineb Sedira
Dreams Have No Titles
On the High Line at 14th Street
September 8 – November 1, 2023
Daily, starting at dusk

In 2022, Zineb Sedira won special mention of the Jury at the Venice Biennale for Dreams Have No Titles, her presentation for the French Pavilion. A multi-layered installation, performance, and film, Sedira’s pavilion told her own story of falling in love with film—first watching Italian epics and Spaghetti Westerns in the cinema Les Variétés with her father, which eventually leads her to visit the Algerian Cinémathèque, Algiers’ rich film archive. For the film, Sedira restaged scenes from many of her favorite famous films, including surprising collaborations and solidarities across Italy, France, and Algeria during the country’s fight for independence. Dreams Have No Titles addresses a major turning point in the history of cultural, intellectual and avant-garde production of the 1960s and 1970s in France, Italy, and Algeria.


Kapwani Kiwanga
On growth
On the High Line at Little West 12th Street
September 2023 – August 2024

For the High Line, Kiwanga presents On growth, a stone sculpture of a fern encased in a dichroic glass structure. The work references Wardian cases, the predecessor of the terrarium, which allowed plants to be transplanted to England from its colonies and for plants to continue to thrive amid London’s polluted air in the late 19th century. These enclosures resembled jewelry cases of the time and, similarly, protected botanic treasures from distant lands. On growth references the colonial histories of institutional and commercial botanic nurseries that influenced the scientific understanding of plants and horticulture of today. The dichroic glass of the sculpture transforms the light passing by the sculpture, creating shadows in shifting hues and shapes and creating a threshold between visible and invisible.

Karon Davis
Curtain Call
On the High Line at 23rd Street
October 2023 – September 2024

For the High Line, Karon Davis creates Curtain Call, a larger-than-life bronze portrait of a ballerina taking her final bow after a performance. The work is inspired by Davis’s childhood, growing up on stage, behind the scenes of dance and theater performances, and seeing the incredible labor, sweat, and perseverance that go into creating a perfect performance for the stage. Davis’s ballerina holds a bouquet of flowers that spills over toward the viewer. The work is part of a large and ongoing series of dancers Davis is working on called Beauty Must Suffer, at once a memory and an homage to her parents and sister, all of whom were professional dancers. The statue will be placed on the Prairie at 23rd Street, turning the architectural design of the High Line itself into a stage.

Curtain Call’s installation on the High Line coincides with an exhibition of Davis’s work at Salon 94, opening October 12, 2023.

Dancing About Architecture
Gerard & Kelly, Young-jun Tak, Clarissa Tossin
November 2, 2023 – January 3, 2024
On the High Line at 14th Street
Daily, starting at dusk

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” is a common phrase used to express the futility of translating the experience of music into words. The film exhibition Dancing About Architecture shares works by three artists who, in turn, take up the challenge of dancing about architecture—of interacting with and interpreting the built environment through the human body.

For more information, visit High Line Art

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