12 Artists Shortlisted for High Line Plinth Commissions

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High Line Art announced the artists shortlisted for the fifth and sixth High Line Plinth Commissions today. The High Line is an elevated park that stretches across 2.3km of western Manhattan on a former railroad spur.

The list of artists is star studded, including Camille Henrot, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Mire Lee, whose commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall will be revealed in October.

Henrot’s entry, You Were Found, is a bronze sculpture of a barn owl. The bird, which features prominently in Jim Henson’s fantasy epic The Labyrinth (1986) is often associated with magic, a connection deepened by the owl’s tail, which unfurls into a scroll.

Nguyen’s The Light that Shines Through the Universe (pictured top) is named after the larger of the two Bamiyan Buddhas, 6th-century statues that were destroyed by the Taliban. The artist cast the Buddha’s hands, missing from the statues long before they were destroyed, from brass artillery shells.

Lee’s proposal, The Leaking Machine, resembles a tangled necklace hanger. Its ‘ribs’ will leak water that will travel down ‘rain chains’ over objects gathered from the surrounding community. The work is intended to act as a shrine for receiving prayers of health and vitality.

The other artists whose proposals were shortlisted are: Dana Awartani, Leilah Babirye, Natalie Ball, Sammy Baloji, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Rachel Feinstein, Candice Lin, Emeka Ogboh, and Gala Porras-Kim.

‘These 12 proposals for the High Line Plinth each offer an exciting perspective on the power and potential of public art to connect us with history, the natural environment, and each other,’ said Cecilia Alemani, the director and chief curator of High Line Art.

Scale models of the shortlisted proposals will be displayed from 19 March in a space directly adjacent to the plinth, where Pamela Rosenkranz‘s hot-pink Old Tree (2023), is now on view. —[O]

Main image: Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Light that Shines Through the Universe, render for the High Line Plinth Commission. Courtesy the artist and High Line Art.