NY -- NYC -- High Line -- Art: Brick House (by Simone Leigh):
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Description of Pictures: Plinth
Simone Leigh
Brick House
June 2019 – September 2020
For the inaugural High Line Plinth commission, Simone Leigh presents Brick House, a sixteen-foot-tall bronze bust of a Black woman. The torso is a combination of the forms of a skirt and a clay house. The figure will stand tall and monumental atop the Plinth, gazing resolutely down 10th Avenue. Brick House‘s head is crowned with an afro framed by cornrow braids along the hairline that extend into four braids, each ending with a cowrie shell. The domed shape of the shoulders and bust are adorned with a pattern of elongated ridges. Brick House is the first monumental work in Anatomy of Architecture, Leigh’s continuing series of sculptures that combine architectural forms from regions as varied as West Africa and the American South with the human body. The sculpture references numerous architectural forms: Batammaliba architecture from Benin and Togo; the teleuk of the Mousgoum people of Cameroon and Chad; and the restaurant Mammy’s Cupboard in the southern U.S. All three references inform both the formal elements of the work—the conflated image of woman and architecture—and its conceptual framework.
Leigh’s Brick House will be centered on the Spur, standing in sharp contrast to the disparate elements of the immediate architectural landscape. The Plinth is the focal point of the Spur, a site whose architectural and human scales are in constant vertiginous negotiation, surrounded by a competitive landscape of glass-and-steel towers shooting up from among older industrial-era brick buildings. In this space, Leigh’s magnificent Black female figure challenges visitors to think more immediately about the architecture around them, and how it reflects customs, values, priorities, and society as a whole.
Simone Leigh works across sculpture, video, installation, and social practice, stitching together references from different historical periods and distant geographical locations. In her densely researched p ...More...
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HIGHBH_191006_08.JPG: Collective Design
The High Line listened to what people wanted for features of the Spur. That means James Corner Field Operations (Project Lead), Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Planting Designer Piet Oudolf -- the same design team behind the first three sections of the park -- created a space for public programming, art, restrooms, access points, food, and plants.
HIGHBH_191006_12.JPG: Design Features
HIGHBH_191006_20.JPG: Simone Leigh
Brick House
Bronze; 9 x 9 x 16 feet
June 2019 – September 2020
Simone Leigh presents Brick House, a 16-foot-tall bronze bust of a Black woman with a torso that combines the forms of a skirt and a clay house. The sculpture's head is crowned with an afro framed by cornrow braids, each ending in a cowrie shell. Brick House is the inaugural commission for the High Line Plinth, a new landmark destination for major public artworks in New York City. This is the first monumental sculpture in Leigh's Anatomy of Architecture series, an ongoing body of work in which the artist combines architectural forms from regions as varied as West Africa and the Southern United States with the human body. The title comes from the term for a strong Black woman who stands with the strength, endurance, and integrity of a house made of bricks.
Brick House references numerous architectural styles: Batammaliba architecture from Benin and Togo, the teleuk dwellings of the Mousgoum people of Cameroon and Chad, and the restaurant Mammy's Cupboard in Natchez, Mississippi. The sculpture contrasts sharply against the landscape it inhabits, where glass-and-steel towers shoot up from among older industrial-era brick buildings, and where architectural and human scales are in constant negotiation. Resolutely facing down 10th Avenue, Leigh's powerful Black female figure challenges us to consider the architecture around us, and how it reflects customs, values, priorities, and society as a whole.
Leigh works across sculpture, video, installation, and social practice, stitching together references from different historical periods and distant geographical locations. As a sculptor, Leigh works predominantly in ceramics -- a medium that she mastered early in her career -- continually pushing the boundaries of her chosen material by working in new methods and larger scales. In her intersectional practice, Leigh focuses on how the body, society, and architecture inform and reveal one another. She examines the construction of Black female subjectivity, both through specific historical figures such as Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham, and more generally through overlapping historical lineages across Europe, Africa, the US, and the Caribbean.
The High Line Plinth presents a series of art installations that rotate every eighteen months. Designed as the focal point of the Spur, the newest section of the park that opened in spring 2019, the Plinth is the first space on the High Line dedicated solely to new commissions of contemporary art.
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[Park (Local)][Public Art]
2019 photos: Overnight trips this year:
(May, August, October, December) Four trips to New York City (including the United Nations, Flushing, and the New York Comic-Con),
(July) My 14th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con (including sites in Utah).
(August) Massachusetts (Boston, Stockbridge, and Springfield) to experie/nce rain in another state, and
(August) Asheville, NC to visit Dad and his wife Dixie.
Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Number of photos taken this year: about 582,000.
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