Look Again!
Written by: Cristina Deptula
Fresh and Relevant Takes on Public Art
Dive in as we explore the changing and expanding roles of public art in modern cities—inspiring thought, supporting the arts as a public good, showcasing cultural diversity, raising awareness of important issues, having fun, and celebrating life—and showcasing some intriguing pieces.
Public, tax-funded art represents a way to support art and artists by commissioning works for wide public display.
Originally, modern public art often reflected themes meant to symbolize national greatness and pride, such as statues of military and political leaders. Today, however, many public art projects are more diverse in scope, style, and theme and are designed with input and ideas from nearby local communities.
This process gets more people involved in art making and brings thoughtful and intriguing pieces out of the museum and into our cities and neighborhoods, where even more people can see and interact with them.
Some pieces are iconic, such as Chicago’s Cloud Gate sculpture or the Diego Rivera murals in Mexico City, while others are lesser known but still meaningful or interesting.Often, there’s more to a piece of public art than passersby realize, and learning a little about the piece and its history can help us appreciate the work. It can be a great experience to wander your own city like a tourist, take a guided walking tour, or just read up on the monuments and murals you pass every day. Also, local history museums and websites such as Atlas Obscura and Attractions of America point out interesting sights and provide background and history on them.
NYC Hot Dog Sculpture
Fun Is a Worthy Cause
Some public art can simply be whimsical and entertaining, enhancing our enjoyment of life. Attractions of America’s list of 15 Most Bizarre Monuments in the United States includes a giant fork stuck in the ground outside what used to be a restaurant and is now an ad agency in Springfield, Missouri. In the same vein, a brick building in Portland, Oregon, has a giant salmon sculpture “swimming” through its walls in a nod to the area’s food culture.
Melbourne artist Callum Morton has adorned some of the city’s back door building entrances with colorful mosaics. Rather than aiming his work at tourists, he’s added a bit of color and fun to narrow alleys frequented by sanitation workers, office staff, and rough sleepers. Charlotte, North Carolina, sports Metalmorphosis, a 14-ton kinetic arrangement of metal pieces on the edge of a pond that moves around and comes together at regular intervals to form a human head spitting into the water.
In New York’s Times Square, artists Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw have installed a giant sculpture of a hot dog in a bun with mustard, which they say is “so New York.” In a nod to the joy this brought to local residents, art and design fabrication company UAP recognized it as one of the standout public art projects of 2024.
Anish Kapoor’s Descension
Worthy of a Second Look
Online art school Kadenze has outlined and listed a few pieces that are mesmerizing and entertaining and are better experienced with a second, deeper look. The Art + Com sculpture in Singapore’s Changi Airport consists of one thousand bronze raindrops, each connected to a motor individually operated by an encoder. The drops synchronize to form various shapes as you stand and watch, which the artist intended to symbolize working together in a community.
In Camerota, Italy, Edoardo Tresoldi’s wire mesh installation Incipit evokes the shape of a building as it has faded into memory. Wire birds in mid-flight capture the motif of the fleeting nature of each moment and our desire to preserve and remember history. Yang Minha’s LED light tunnel, Accumulation near Seoul’s Le Meridien Gate, presents colored lights arrayed in a series of geometric grids rotated at various angles. Walking through the tunnel gives viewers the illusion that the lights are moving. Anish Kapoor’s swirling vortex of water, Descension, invites people to stare into a mesmerizing, endless spiraling pool of water. Descension debuted at the 2015 Kochi-Muziris festival in India before being moved to Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2017.
In Palm Springs, Doug Aitken’s entrancing work Mirage is a single-family, suburban-style home covered by mirrors, reflecting the hot desert landscape to viewers. Aitken was inspired by how we often don’t register the presence of buildings that look extremely similar to those around them. They can just fade into our mental landscapes. The piece’s title evokes optical illusions generated by the heat, also possibly a comment on generations of Californians and Westerners persevering in chasing dreams, even if they prove illusory. Also, the mirror images make the surrounding landscape, rather than Aitken’s architecture, the focus of the artwork. This could be taken as an environmental message about the beauty of the natural world in a landscape some might consider harsh and barren.
Re-Imagining Public Art for Inclusion
Other pieces of public art intentionally and explicitly convey social and ecological messages. Lorenzo Quinn’s piece Support, large, white sculpted hands emerging from the water and grabbing onto a building in Venice, evokes ancient Roman imagery while warning of the danger of climate change. Diana Lelonek’s Reed Field in Warsaw, meriting UAP’s 2024 projects-of-the-year inclusion, is a large rainwater storage area planted with wetland reed Phragmites australis. The work serves as a home for local animals and plants while paying tribute to the area’s Jewish heritage and Jewish communities’ history of growing this reed on communal kibbutz farms and commenting on how humans can find ways to coexist with nature.
Some pieces of public art have been removed in recent years due to popular demand, such as statues of Christopher Columbus and Confederate Civil War soldiers in the United States and a statue of King Leopold in Antwerp, Belgium, that was taken down by officials after repeated defacement with graffiti. These removals have come out of a greater global awareness of the historical legacy and impacts of racism, colonial violence, and oppression. Also, our tastes in public art are changing, with the involvement of more communities around the world in the choice and design of subjects for public art. One inclusive artwork, also recognized by UAP as a standout public piece of 2024, is Tina Havelock’s Sonic Luminescence, a pedestrian tunnel in Sydney, Australia, animated with sound and light. With drum music created by First Nations people and inspired by their musical traditions and the sound of native birds, the tunnel project seeks to recapture the look and feel of Sydney before colonization. Another standout piece per UAP is Emmalene Blake’s mural of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl recently killed by Israeli forces during their military operations in Gaza. On a wall in Dublin, Ireland, the mural comments on the war’s toll on civilians.
Doug Aitken’s Mirage
Art for All Seasons
Public art serves many purposes and is becoming even more inclusive and responsive to a more diverse public. Projects provide needed cash to support artists and reaffirm the importance of art as something that benefits our entire society. Whether the artworks draw attention to important issues, reflect the diversity of our world heritage, intrigue and captivate people with their craft and beauty, inspire thought and consideration, or simply help us have fun and enjoy life, they are worth exploring and supporting! 
TrooRa Magazine
Written by
Cristina Deptula
California, USA
