The other day, I was walking near a bus stop by the Common when I saw something interesting: At the bus stop, in that usual spot where you'd see an ad, there was this big, vibrant piece of art.
But it wasn't actually a painting. It was a surreal photo with two women at the center painted white and wearing all black, sitting on these bright red chairs, vibrant blue and red and yellow hues behind them. There were eight other women in bright red cloaks who look like they're marching in a line behind them. Totally unlike anything you'd usually expect at a bus stop.
I wanted to know why this weird and beautiful photo was here. So I called up the artist: Aïda Muluneh, a photographer and artist based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. She’s also a promoter of developing photography as an art form in Africa.
The photo is part of a new public art installation in JCDecaux bus shelters in New York, Chicago, Boston and Abidjan. It's called “This is Where I Am.”
“I have many memories of the cold winters in Canada having to take the bus to go to different places,” Muluneh said. “I think for a lot of people that take public transportation, it's an interesting way to engage them in looking at something outside of just advertising.”
Muluneh, who was born in Ethiopia and grew up in Canada and Yemen, among other places, said the public art project appealed to her because it allowed her to bring her art to more people, as opposed to having it cloistered in an institution or gallery.
Her work is often colorful, carrying a distinct visual language, she said.
“I know I have a very distinct visual language, which took me a while to arrive to this point,” she said. “For those that see my work, it's something that they don't forget because it has its own approach.”
She brings her subjects onto sets she builds, and works with teams of artists to make props.
“I utilize a lot of my heritage, my culture. I do body painting,” Muluneh said. “It's the kind of work that you'll see from quite a distance. And there's a striking element to it.”
This project is the first time in her career that she’s worked in a vertical format. Usually, she said, her works are square.
“I liked that challenge because it took me out of my comfort zone to think in the vertical,” Muluneh said. “To try to imagine what I wanted to say that I've been saying within a square format, and to reformat into this different style.
She and her team also enjoyed the process of making public art.
“It's been really an open conversation on public art that really, I think, supports the artist's vision of what we want to say,” Muluneh said. “I enjoyed working with them because it's a conversation, and it's a negotiation that we have. But at the end of the day, for me, I look at intent. And the intent to me is really to bring a different form of art into the public that would not normally engage in it, and to also engage an audience that might not necessarily go into these galleries or go into these museums.”
