OUTER SEED SHADOW

Outer Seed Shadow is a site-specific art project by artist Juanli Carrión with ORE Design + Technology that serves as an investigation of what it means to be a contemporary migrant today, trying to reveal the complexities between the individuals, their culture and the country they now call home. It is an investigation that can happen at different geographic levels—county, city, borough, neighborhood, district, block or building—with Manhattan serving as the limiting boundary for #01.

OSS#01 materializes the union between plant and human migration tendencies and theories, using different plant species as representatives of social groups. OSS#01 is a community garden informed by geography, a document of the migrant experience through video interviews and self-identified plants, a study of social interaction and the politics of immigration illustrated by plants, and an aesthetic exercise exploring the appropriation of the scientific for sociological study.

In 2013, the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation offered five potential Manhattan locations to Juanli Carrión for the installation of OSS#01. The artist chose Duarte Square. Named after the Dominican Republican liberator, this park is located in downtown Manhattan’s Hudson Square district. In Spring of 2013, the Hudson Square rezoning plan was approved—a plan five years in the making that allows for the creation of a denser, mixed-use district. OSS#01 it is at the cornerstone of this rezoning, on the Avenue of the Americas at the crossroads of neighborhoods with strong immigration histories. OSS#01 is an opportune place to engage in a dialogue about city, place and immigration, especially when immigration is a hot-button issue on political agendas nationwide.

Visit Outer Seed Shadow.