A 2004 visual proposition that the New York subway map, shaped by the public art of its stations, is itself a face.
Arts Under New York (AUNY) was originally developed as the artist's graduate thesis at Parsons School of Design in 2004, the year of the New York City subway's centennial. The work proposed that the subway — made beautiful by the public artworks embedded in its stations — transforms even its system map into the image of a beautiful woman, a Venus rendered in transit lines.
If riding the subway is repeatedly framed by encounters with public art, then the map that organizes those encounters ceases to be neutral information. It begins to carry the aesthetic character of what it points toward.
AUNY established the methodological framework that continues across the artist's practice: visual systems studied as carriers of identity, recognition treated as constructed rather than received.
The proposition has remained unrealized in physical form for over two decades.
Acquisition by inquiry.
Acquisition by inquiry.
