Seobin Park

Oasis

Class of: 2025

Major: Integrated Design BFA

Medium: 3D modeling, photography

Faculty: Amy Stoker

Prompt: Proposing a site-specific public art installation in NYC (What do you want to create? Where would it be installed? Why this location? Who is your ideal audience? Would the location successfully connect to the intended audience? Does the concept or theme of the installation logically connect to the location?)

New York City, one of the most populous cities in the world, is thought to be a place with a highly grown economy, an enormous city with fancy buildings, colorful fashion, and cold technology industry. However, behind those stunning views of New York, there is a place where people don’t care as much as other places- the subway. The New York subway is indeed smelly, dirty, and noisy. It is hard to deny these facts since every subway has these common without exception. Among those stations in NY, I wanted to display my art installation at Union Square station since it was the first place that gave me a special experience of how the subway could possibly have this kind of scent and told me there’s something more going on in this beautiful city. In addition, due to the result, I realized the forest was revitalized as a city centered on the union square park which was made purposely by removing the farmland and sand. The proximity, coupled with a quickly growing downtown center featuring hotels, shops, and cultural facilities, helped solidify the square’s status as a vogue area.

Hence, through my installation, I wanted to symbolize union square park as the site that started the destruction of nature and the smelly place that cause discomfort. I wanted to emphasize the symbolism and make people realize it just by passing by my installation. The shape of rocks, branches, and a tree that reminds nature are displayed at the large space on the sideway under the union square station. People will smell some cool scent due to the perfumes that are stored inside the leave balls. This public art installation is going to be displayed in the middle of an industrialized place like an oasis in the desert.