Artists Dahlia Elsayed and Saya Woolfalk are the first to be included in Art at Amtrak, a rotating series of site-specific installations in the subterranean Midtown station.
Across the street from the newly renovated Moynihan Train Hall, the comparatively drab Penn Station sits below Madison Square Garden, shepherding New Jersey commuters and long-distance train riders under the low ceilings of its underground halls. Now, two site-specific installations by Dahlia Elsayed and Saya Woolfalk bring the natural world — and warmth — into the fluorescent-lit New York City transit hub.
The two artists are the first to be included in a new public art program called Art at Amtrak, which will exhibit a rotating series of site-specific installations in the subterranean Midtown station that draws upwards of half a million passengers each day.
Now, travelers who enter the station from Eighth Avenue descend an escalator into Dahlia Elsayed’s 360-degree intervention, a series of paintings reproduced throughout the space and collectively titled “Parallel Incantations.” Elsayed told Hyperallergic that the work, with its evocations of columns and friezes, is meant to resemble an Ancient Egyptian temple and create a circular narrative, one which viewers can choose to engage with — or disengage from — at any point in the display.
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View the full article at hyperallergic.com