4. Unruly Forms by Felipe Baeza
On August 9th, you may spot Felipe Baeza’s Unruly Forms exhibition on one of 400 JCDecaux bus shelters or other pieces of New York street furniture produced by Public Art Fund. Baeza has created 8 new compositions, all of which contain painting, collage, and printmaking techniques that make up what the artist calls, “a fugitive body”. Based on his long term research into Mesoamerican artifacts in museum collections across New York City, Baeza has created hybrid humanoid figures, whose bodies twist and move in a chaotic, unrestrained form. The imaginative pieces with a mind of their own will be displayed on bus shelters in the city to show viewers that the location where artifacts, history, and art is held acts to reanimate their power and life within new contexts.
The collection’s theme is mystical reinvention and hybridity: the ideas suggesting that the mythic potency of artifacts does not cease when collected by a museum, but rather remains in a constant state of becoming. The ancient images we see in textbooks or archives hold meaning and power in their age and original time while also belonging to the present. If you’re able to catch Baeza’s pieces in person, you’ll get the most out of the experience if you can ask yourself; What do these figures mean here and now?
