Lauren Halsey’s Monumental Commission for The Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden to Opens April 18, 2023

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.

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.

The Roof Garden Commission: Lauren Halsey is on view until October 22, 2023 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art located at 1000 5th Avenue in New York City.