Lauren Halsey’s large-scale architecture structure commissioned for The Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden is now on view through October 22, 2023. Titled the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I), the work is imbued with the collective energy and imagination of the South Central Los Angeles community where Halsey was born and continues to work. Rising 22 feet high and composed of more than 750 glass-fiber-reinforced concrete tiles, the cube-like structure is surrounded by four columns and four sphinxes. It is designed to be inhabited by The Met’s visitors, who will be able to explore its connections to sources as varied as ancient Egyptian symbolism, 1960s utopian architecture, and contemporary visual expressions like tagging that reflect the ways in which people aspire to make public places their own.
Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met, said, “We are incredibly excited for visitors to experience Lauren Halsey’s magnificent commission for the Museum’s Cantor Roof Garden. With this installation, Halsey channels The Met’s unparalleled Egyptian Art collections through the lens of Afrofuturism, while also creating a powerful form of documentation of her neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. Engaging with the past, while also exploring a space of speculative imagination, Halsey offers us a powerful statement about civic space, social activism, and a reconsideration of the possibilities for architecture and community engagement.”
Halsey said, “My installation for The Met’s Roof Garden reflects my interest in conflating narratives from contemporary South Central Los Angeles with those evoked in ancient pharaonic architecture. My hope is that viewers in New York feel the connections intuitively.”
Almost every surface of the structure is covered with a dense collage of phrases and images—all drawn from a specific vernacular of signs, texts, and symbols observed in the artist’s historically Black neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles— that together result in an architectural container of community archives and histories. By adapting elements of ancient Egyptian architecture and sculpture for a contemporary context, Halsey’s commission redeploys the hieroglyph as a tool for documenting and commemorating how community vitality and genre-defying creativity shape the built environments of South Central Los Angeles.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication that will include an interview between Halsey and poet, performer, and librettist Douglas Kearney; and an essay by Thomas. The publication will be available for purchase at The Met Store for $9.95 beginning in May.
Related education programs will include experiences—from hands-on activities to live performance—that engage with and respond to the artist’s work, as well as concepts of place, home, and popular culture. Programming details will be posted on The Met website as they become availabl
