On the face of it, Port Authority Bus Terminal isn’t the ideal spot for an art installation — but from October 3 you’re invited to smile, frown, pull a funny face… whatever floats your boat — and become part of Inside Out: NY Together.
The installation will turn one long exterior wall of the Terminal — a 40-foot-tall and 600-foot-long stretch, along W 40th Street — into a gallery of black and white portrait photos of 1,200 locals and visitors who pass through the area.
From October 3-8, 10am to 5pm, a mobile photo booth parked on W 40th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues will invite passersby to step inside and be photographed. Within minutes, participants will be part of the artwork, their images printed on-site and pasted onto the wall.
The project is by French artist JR, who has created installations all over the world – and who made quite an impression on Times Square on his 2013 visit to New York City.
“This is who we are,” Barbara A. Blair, the president of the Garment District Alliance, which is leading the project in cooperation with the Port Authority, said in an interview with the New York Times.
“It’s important to make a statement,” she said, noting the diversity and resiliency of the city. “The city is a city because we’re all in it together.”
Continuing the artsy theme, on October 2, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) member artist Laura Anderson Barbata in collaboration with the Brooklyn Jumbies will present Intervention: Red — a public processional performance involving costumed and masked performers in wearable sculptures up to 16 ft tall.
The work will bring together traditional West African and West Indian stilt dancers and ground dancers and begins and ends at EFA, 323 W 39th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue. It starts at 4pm, and the public is invited to wear red and join in the fun!