Magzoid Magazine - Luxury Magazine in the Creative Space | September 2022

ART NEWS
Meta set to unveil sprawling
artworks of individual artists in
their New York HQ in Moynihan Station
Meta, the parent company
of Facebook is the tenant
of a transformed former
post office which now
includes the gleaming new transit
hub Moynihan Station. A team of
artists is helping Meta to get ready to
welcome its employees to their new
offices at Farley Station on the West
Side of midtown Manhattan this fall
with sprawling landscape art. For the
artists, this stands to be the largest
artwork they have ever worked on in
their careers.
Meta occupies 700,000 square
feet and has commissioned five
specific artworks from emerging and
established artists who have roots in
the local community. The results so
far have been nothing short of mindblowing.
The Farley Station building is
an important center for people to
connect and communicate with each
other. To Meta Open Arts head Tina
Vaz, it is a special feeling. This site is
special because of the works of art
that have been installed here.
At the center of the building, is
artist Timur Si-Qin’s Sacred Footprint,
a 50-foot tall, two-ton, stainless steel
and aluminum, suspended sculpture,
that he created and engineered
to span the four-story skylit space.
Building on the ancient symbol of
the Tree of Life, it represents the
interconnectedness of all things.
Baseera Khan created a two-part
installation that includes a major
sculpture and a mural located in
the main area of the second-floor
offices. Fresh from her solo show
at the Brooklyn Museum, the large
sculpture references a Corinthian
column and is composed of a
hollowed-out column form, the
exterior of which is wrapped in
handmade silk rugs created by men
and women in Kashmir.
Nature Remembers Love, is meant
“to evoke an empathetic relationship
with plants, other animals and the
land,” according to Howard.
In the building’s “Ring Lobby”,
which is visible from the waiting
area of the Moynihan train hall,
Brooklyn-based artist Liz Collins has
composed vibrantly-colored textiles
to create a sprawling installation
across four walls spanning more than
100 feet in length.
Matthew Kirk’s composition of A
Shadow of a Shadow, which spans
22 feet in length, and A Distant Lie,
which measures eight feet across
and 11 feet high is a sight to behold.
Kirk’s “weaving” paintings for Meta
rely on the same grid structure as the
Navajo rugs of his heritage but use
modern-day construction materials
woven through a steel rebar grid as
the ground for the hundreds of small
paintings that adorn these works,
according to Vaz.
Open Arts were initially founded
in 2010 as a residency program
at Facebook. Artists were
commissioned to create work
along with employees on-site at the
company’s headquarters, giving
Facebook workers insight into the
artistic process.
In the end, this is not the makings
of an art exhibition but rather a
space where the artists who call this
place home have a blank canvas to
share their heritage with their local
community.
-news@magzoid.com
www.magzoid.com September 2022 9