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.