In honor of Juneteenth, Alina Lundry’s Highline Stages has commissioned a special mural, completed yesterday in the Meatpacking district in New York. Coinciding with the commemoration of Freedom Day, the mural was created by two artists from the New York Academy of Art (NYAA), Carl Keita and Oluwatosin Adesanya-Olaleye.
Keita and Adesanya-Olaleye created four large-scale works that fill the windows of a building in the New York City neighborhood. Scenes include a figure with multiple faces, reminiscent of a cultural mask; and a pig intertwined with donuts. Keita is a draughtsman from Cote d’Ivoire, attending the academy’s MFA program, and Adesanya-Olaleye is a Nigerian-American painter and recent graduate, who was a recipient of the Mickalene Thomas Scholarship.
Highline Stages mural commission by Carl Keita and Oluwatosin Adesanya-Olaleye; courtesy of New York Academy of Art.
Highline Stages was conceived with innovation in arts in mind and is home to a suite of sound stages, green screens, cycloramas, and other creative spaces for photographers, filmmakers, artists, and designers.
