Weird, Icelandic sculptures appear in Midtown

Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, with its leafy shade, peaceful fountains and weekly farmers market, is my little private sanctuary in East Midtown.

Political protests and public art have come and gone from this little plaza, which is named for a former head of the nearby UN. But walking through it recently, I was struck by something new and alarming: pairs of androgynous, faceless, life-sized human sculptures, seated seemingly at random throughout the plaza.

photo from steinunnth.com

Creepy, or wildly cool? As always, I turned to my google master for some perspective.

According to the New York City Department of Parks and Rec, the figures are the handiwork of the well-known Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir, whose work has been installed across public spaces in Europe, Japan, Australia and the U.S.

Apparently, her themes lie somewhere in the ballpark of highlighting the subtle interactions between people.

It's hard not to notice, for instance, that the plaza's figures are placed in such a way that a viewer is physically between two figures who seem to be in some sort of silent conversation.

Thórarinsdóttir's figures at the University of Georgia - photo by UGA

The official Parks and Rec statement is that the installation, Borders, will connect the UN's "many diverse constituencies to new artistic experiences" and "foster conversation" at the plaza's very public space.

But I smell something deeper here.

In his essay The Privacy of Emotion, art historian Erik Thorlaksson points out that while the initial experience of eating lunch next to a cast iron human figure might be common to all viewers on the surface, any further meaning is a deeply personal one:

"Some critics have noted that Thórarinsdóttir’s mostly asexual figures, be they whole or ‘broken’, seem to convey an eerie atmosphere of loneliness, isolation or even sadness; others have seen the same works as monuments to meditation, dignity and peace within an individual at ease with himself. However, such analysis only scratches the surface of her works, but that is exactly where all shared interpretation comes to a stop: we can share views on what we see, but the figures give nothing away of what rest within."

Whatever the public reaction, I'm looking forward to a long summer of watching diplomats in black suits, interns and construction workers alike, all equally bewildered by these eerie figures.


Borders  runs from March 24 through September 30, 2011.