13 – 23. Uniqlo Park Expressions Brings 10 Art Installations to the 5 Boroughs

As part of the Uniqlo Park Expressions grant, each borough of New York City will get two site-specific art installations by emerging artists. The program is part of NYC Parks’ ongoing initiatives to bring greater equity to parks via cultural programming.  Manhattan will have James and Karla Murray’s Mom and Pop LES, a bodega/storefront installation in Seward Park featuring several local businesses that have been lost. Harumi Ori will use industrial mesh in the sacred orange color of Japan to make three-dimensional pieces in Thomas Jefferson Park at 113th Street and 1st Avenue.

The Bronx will get works in Joyce Kilmer Park by Dionisio Cortes Ortega (with seating inspired by neighboring Bronx County Courthouse) and in Virginia Park by Cara Lynch (with a colorful ground mural in a play on parquet flooring).

Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park will have a work by Tanda Francis that explores African presence in public parks and Herbert von King Park in Bedford-Stuyvesant will have by Robert Visani that is inspired by indigenous figures in West African art.

In Queens, Zaq Landsberg will recreate islands from the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and place them in parts of the park as seating, stages, and meeting places. In Rufus King Park in Jamaica, Mirrored Monuments by Rose Desiano will look at the complex history of displacement and immigration in the neighborhood.

In Staten Island, Jackie Mock will install handmade vitrines that contain antique pencils and writing instruments, a reference to the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company, whose founder Johann Eberhard Faber once had a mansion on the site of Faber Park. And in Tappen Park, Stick Stump &  The Lawn Lumps by Adam Frezza and Terri Chiao will feature five colorful sculptures that can be used for a multiplicity of purposes, from seating to performance, relaxation or public interactio.