OSS#02

NYC Parks welcomes Outer Seed Shadow #02 (OSS#02), the latest installment of an ongoing project by Spanish artist Juanli Carrión. This temporary living sculpture and community garden will be on view from June 2 through October 1, 2016 in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, at the park’s entrance at Myrtle Avenue and Washington Park. This is Carrión‘s second public installation with Parks. There will be an opening reception on June 2 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with remarks followed by refreshments at the Fort Greene Park Visitors Center.

OSS is a series of public art interventions in the form of geopolitical gardens that represent the union between plants and human interaction. The project was conceived in 2012, when Carrión began considering permanent residence in the United States after years of living in New York. Carrión revisits the enduring idea of the American “melting pot” and investigates the new realities of immigrant life in present-day New York, the most symbolic of immigrant cities. This project also explores landscapes as symbols that define places and people as well as how various cultural backgrounds can be reflected in a garden.

The first incarnation of this project, which is an ongoing exploration of coexistence, cultural identity and immigration, was installed in lower Manhattan’s Duarte Square in 2014. The threefold public art installation, community garden, and educational center for community discussion derives from a series of videotaped, at-home interviews conducted by Carrión with immigrants living in a particular borough of New York City. The interviewees are asked about their personal experiences with cultural adaptation and coexistence since arriving in New York. At the end of the discussion, each interviewee selects a plant that exists in both their country of origin and the United States to be planted in the garden.

This 230-square-foot garden is in the shape of Brooklyn and features 36 different plants chosen by immigrants living in the borough. Placed according to the interviewees’ physical locations within Brooklyn, the plants represent the immigrants, their communities, and the diversity of the borough. All these plants will coexist side-by-side in this impossible garden, just as people of different cultural backgrounds live among each other in the city. Linden trees representing Argentina will grow alongside chamomile symbolizing Russia; parsley from Syria might be next to Mexican corn; and four-o’clock flowers reminiscent of Trinidad & Tobago will appear beside red currants chosen by an immigrant from France.