Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High)

Baseera Khan’s practice uses the lens of their own body to investigate how desire and surveillance shape subjectivity, including the construction of the artist’s own gender and Muslim identity. Khan assembles references from ancient Middle Eastern cultures found in museums and archaeological archives, abstracting architectural scale and humanizing ostensibly objective collections of art and artifacts. Khan’s large-scale installations are inviting – often incorporating sumptuous colors and radical adornments – and encourage viewers to think about challenging topics such as xenophobia, spirituality, and invisible labor.

For the High Line, Khan installs a monumental archway made of inscribed tablets under The Standard, High Line. To create Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High), Khan interviewed High Line staff members and photographed the numerous shipping boxes of supplies that circulate within the complex ecosystem of the park. Khan’s inscriptions on the archway include packaging labels and handwritten notes jotted down by staff members onto incoming cardboard boxes. Perforating the sculpture are patterns referencing punctuation symbols from the Quran, drawn with motifs inspired by the park’s flora and fauna. The archway is made from recycled granite and a man-made stone-like composite commonly used for countertops in home kitchens. In their material choices, Khan points to the circulation of materials in the park, and to the unseen domestic labor largely performed by women. Khan’s reimagined public monument paints a portrait of the park and the people who maintain it every day, as well as the people far away who manufacture the goods shipped to our door. While historically archways have been inscribed with the names and symbols of nobles and leaders, this archway is a monument to the ecosystem of labor and people around the world who make the High Line possible.

Listen to Baseera Khan talk about the personal inspiration for the artwork: