Soft Spin (New York)
Commissioned by Arts Brookfield USA, Produced by PVW
Installed high up in the grandeur of the World Financial Center’s iconic Winter Garden, this kinetic sound installation presented viewers with six gargantuan skirt forms that gracefully swirled to and fro inside the glass-vaulted pavilion. These bright coloured luminous sculptures became a femme choir of sorts, with each emanating a single voice that was heard with singularity when standing directly below, part of a six-track unified audio score. Both celebrating strides in gender equity and acknowledging setbacks, the singing “skirts” offered up sounds from the big stage to the shower, from call-and response traditions to spontaneous riffs. The vocalizations, devised to periodically burst out upon the atrium, encouraged passersby in this male-dominated corporate space to pause and reflect on the connections between gendered roles and architectural space, and on the power of the feminine when it is seen and heard.