Inspired by The Plain of Jars, the three massive steel forms that compose UNEARTHED in Riverside Park suggest the weight of ancient and recorded history. This accompanying soundscape, intended to be experienced while visiting UNEARTHED, highlights the transient and intangible beauty of our day to day lives - a shared beauty that can be a point of connection between individuals and communities echoing across time.

UNEARTHED 2026-2027 is a sculptural installation at 145th street in Riverside Park in New York City. It consists of three steel forms inspired by The Plain of Jars - a vast landscape in Laos littered with 1,500 year old, 9 ft tall stone jars emerging from the ground at unexpected angles. 

For me, the Plain of Jars is such an apt metaphor for the inevitable and unexpected ways that our histories - especially the more inconvenient chapters - impose themselves on the present.  And it is a reminder that the world is littered with objects like these (albeit most of them a bit smaller), objects that speak to our origins as individuals and communities and the human impulse to both preserve and rehabilitate. This impulse reflects our relationships with the past, centers our lived experience and signals our hopes for the future.

Vessels like the megalithic Laotian jars, the terra-cotta jars containing the Dead Sea Scrolls, Egyptian Canopic jars, African-American memory jars from the American south, the milk cans buried beneath the Warsaw Ghetto are breadcrumbs pointing to narratives that pre-date and outlast us. Created with the intention to preserve and venerate, they help us transcend ruptured timelines, dislocation, and loss to find connection in human experience.

UNEARTHED is an installation emerging from the ground on the banks of the Hudson River, over 8,000 miles from the megalithic stone jars in Laos. It too is a reminder that there is more to be discovered , buried beneath the surface - in our parks, in our neighborhoods, in our cities and beyond. Wherever we are, the ground beneath our feet is a repository for objects, strata of stories.   UNEARTHED provides a place to consider, celebrate, and find community with those who came before us: the Lenape, the European colonial farmers, 19th century Irish and Jewish immigrants, the African American community that fueled the Harlem Renaissance. 

At a time during which history is often flattened and used to divide us, I hope that UNEARTHED can be a reminder that public lands have always been nexus points for an infinite number of narratives - yesterday, today and far into the future.

Unveiled on OCTOBER 5, 2026, UNEARTHED was made possible by the Art Students League of New York, the NYC Parks Department, and Riverside Park Conservancy and was fabricated by Brandywine Valley Fabricators.