Last month, the Art Production Fund debuted a public art project in collaboration with New York-based artist, LaKela Brown. The fourth installation in the non-profit’s year-round Art in Focus program, Brown created a series of works focusing on adornment, made to fill spaces within and around Rockefeller Center in New York.
At 45 Rockefeller Plaza, three vitrines have been filled with site-specific plaster reliefs, featuring impressions of earrings, bamboo hoops, heavy rope chains, and even the artist’s own body, and embedded with materials from her life growing up—like references to ‘90s music.
Courtesy of LaKela Brown and Art Production Fund.
The presentation also features a selection of vinyl murals, installed in the plaza’s public areas, which include symbols and motifs found in Brown’s work. Immortalizing artifacts that are usually associated with African American culture, the prints are a continuation of the artist’s interest in the sartorial, while creating an entirely new context for her work.
“I feel honored to share my work at Rockefeller Center. I am interested to learn how experiencing my work in this beautiful gilded space will inform the questions around adornment, history and value that I explore in my studio. I hope that my installation will strike a juxtaposition that contributes to the context of my sources and the base of my desires,” said Brown.
Courtesy of LaKela Brown and Art Production Fund.
