This newly commissioned public art exhibition by Rose B. Simpson is on view simultaneously in Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park. Seed is part of the milestone twentieth anniversary of Madison Square Park Conservancy’s art program and is the Conservancy’s first collaboration with another New York City public park. Throughout the run of the exhibition, free public programs will be held with Simpson, artists, neighbors, and Native and area cultural leaders.

Simpson and other artists of her generation are resetting long-entrenched art historical interpretation around the soaring capacity of figuration. Seed is a formidable platform for this reassessment. The artist creates sentinels in weathered steel and bronze that lead with angularity and durability; industrial bolts fasten masks forged in bronze to sections cut from ten-foot-long steel sheets. But there is implicit tension within: Simpson constructs planar compositions that at only three-quarters of an inch deep have an exquisite fragility, like that of a towering paper doll flattened over generations and held in place by a folded steel stand. She shapes symbolism in each sculpture, where the Native past is enduring and resonant. The sentinels seem to have an acute understanding of their role as contemporary figures.

In Madison Square Park, seven eighteen-foot-high sentinels convene in a circle supporting and nurturing a female form who emerges from the earth. In Inwood Hill Park, one sculpture faces the ancient wood in acknowledgment of Native histories deeply connected to the land; the other looks outward to the Hudson River, part of a trade route that brought settlers who worked to obliterate Native people and practices beginning in the 1600s.

The figures in Seed are in the present while anticipating the future from bronze masks patinated in turquoise. The faces looking in are youth; those gazing outward are protectors. They all summon layers of narratives, personal and collective human experiences that have seeded Simpson’s life and art. She refers to visual languages, reflecting her training as a contemporary artist and as a Native artist building fortitude through the assembled group. Simpson’s work channels the vision of an artist raised in Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico and is installed in two public parks in Lenapehoking, the homelands of the Lenape people. Her sentinels are androgynous; there is fluidity in their bearing.

The artist recently described the significance of installing Seed in two sites in Manhattan:

While I am there with my work, I have the opportunity to guide through reminders. Maybe my work is about the displaced Indigenous residents who had thousands of years communing with that ground—a heuristic relationship that shaped their culture. Maybe it’s about the act of being in that space, gendered. Maybe it’s about the feeling of communing in a public space, about safety, about the feeling of anonymity that comes from an immense crowd, the clench of protective identity and the need to exhale.

Simpson’s art responds to present-day life and the parklands we treasure and occupy. Visitors to Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park will learn about her work, ancestral and contemporary lands, and Native histories through these outdoor exhibitions.

See Seed in the press:

• Art Daily
• Family Style
• GothamToGo
• Hyperallergic
• Surface Mag

ARTIST

Simpson’s practice has been nurtured through Indigenous tradition and the multigenerational, matrilineal succession of artists working with clay. Artists from Santa Clara Pueblo are distinguished for their clay work and pottery, often blackware and redware. Simpson’s sculptures range from intimate pieces to outsize standing figures, monumental forms that impart both a spiritual and an earthly resonance. Her innovative techniques and materials connect tradition to contemporary experience.

MADISON SQUARE PARK CONSERVANCY

Since 2004, Madison Square Park Conservancy has commissioned and presented premier projects by visionary artists ranging in practice and media. This year, the art program celebrates its twentieth anniversary with innovative exhibitions, a comprehensive publication, scholarly and exultant programs, and outreach to new communities.

Madison Square Park Conservancy is responsible for raising 100 percent of the funds necessary to operate the park, including its dynamic public art program, vibrant horticulture, maintenance, sanitation, security, and free cultural programs for park visitors.