Ai Weiwei’s five-borough exhibition

Public Art Fund will present the citywide exhibition “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”, by world renowned artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei. Inspired by the international migration crisis and current global geopolitical landscape, the exhibition transforms the security fence into a powerful social and artistic symbol with interventions across the city. Large-scale, site-specific works will be installed at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at Central Park, the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village, and the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, in partnership with NYC Parks.

These will be joined by site-specific interventions on top of and in between private buildings. The artist will also use spaces that traditionally feature advertising to showcase a new series of 98 documentary images from his research at refugee camps and national borders on bus shelters as well as kiosks citywide. Each of the works will grow out of the existing urban infrastructure, using the fabric of the city as its base and drawing attention to the role of the fence in dividing people. In doing so, the artist highlights how this form, ubiquitous yet also potent, can alter how we perceive and relate to our environment.