Though the city’s cool autumn weather is slowly moving into the frigid air of winter, there is still much public art to explore in the city. Art installations this November present a wide range of themes ranging from grief and the female experience to the formation of connections in a post-pandemic world. This month, head to Prospect Park to be enraptured by abstract wooden sculptures, or Lincoln Center to learn about the once-prosperous San Juan Hill neighborhood. Here are the best public art installations to see in November 2022.
1. The Need You Know It Is A Letting Light at Prospect Park
Located inside the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park is Sarah E. Brook’s multimedia installation The Need You Know It Is A Letting Light, an installation that began in mid-October. Presented by BRIC and the Prospect Park Alliance, The Need You Know It Is A Letting Light conveys the artist’s exploration of the communication between external and internal psychic space through three abstract wooden sculptures and an accompanying mural. Brook’s project marks the first time a sculpture will be presented alongside a mural at the bandshell. Colored red, yellow, and green in the spirit of the park’s natural landscape, the bright mural seeks to allure passersby from within the park into the bandshell.
Alongside the mural, the repurposed wood sculptures, worn in nature with crooked nails and empty holes, appear as bodies supporting one another. Through the abstract designs of her sculptures in The Need You Know It Is A Letting Light, Brook demonstrates her commitment to creating spaces for queer, gender nonconforming, and trans individuals to experiment with embodied perceptions of themselves and what it means to be whole in the universe. Through contextualizing her work in sites of natural landscapes, Brooks experiments with the intertwined nature of the specific and intimate. The Need You Know It Is A Letting Light can be viewed through May 5, 2023.
