Sari Carel
The Shape of Play, 2020
WATERFRONT PARK
Do you feel free to play?
Commissioned for Boston by JArts and curated and produced by Now + There, now known as Boston Public Art Triennial, The Shape of Play, a new public art installation by artist Sari Carel, invites us to reflect on the connections between play and the universal search for freedom. An engaging multi-media work on view at Waterfront Park in the North End, The Shape of Play invites people from across Boston to come, play, question, and explore what freedom means now and what it may look like in the future.
Imagination. Connection. Personal Expression. Fun.
Conceived in the pre-pandemic world, The Shape of Play has taken on new importance in a city full of padlocked play spaces and heightened awareness that not all people experience freedom equally.
Inspired by the beauty, form, function, and simplicity of everyday play structures, The Shape of Play fuses an ambient multi-channel soundtrack with a colorful and architectural sculpture evocative of children’s wooden building blocks. Using tones, textures, shapes, and rhythms, it conjures the playfulness, nostalgia, and life-affirming experiences that we often imagine when we think about our neighborhood playgrounds.
LOCATION
Waterfront Park
WATERFRONT PARK
Sari Carel
Based in Brooklyn, New York, much of multi-media artist Sari Carel's work focuses on translation from one modality to another. Her projects consider interspecies communication, relationships between people and place, and how the senses inform our perception. Also an environmental activist, Sari is a sharp observer of ecosystems, be they natural or human. The Shape of Play is inspired by her many hours spent at playgrounds, watching her children, and considering the sounds that these abstract structures make.
“As a parent, I’ve spent many hours in playgrounds in many cities around the world. As an artist, I can’t help but notice how rich playgrounds are. In sight and sound. At the same time, playgrounds are so common that they are almost invisible. In my work I try to mine what might be invisible to us, to make things that are imperceptible visible and tangible and to make visible the lively relationship between place and abstraction.” — Sari Carel
Carel’s work has been exhibited and screened internationally in venues such as Artists Space, Dumbo Arts Festival, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York; LAX Art and Young Projects in Los Angeles; TA University Gallery in Tel Aviv, and Haifa Museum of Art in Israel and Locust Projects in Miami. She has been awarded numerous fellowships and residencies, including AIR at the Stundars Museum, Finland; AIR Vienna; the Socrates Sculpture Park Artist Fellowship and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency on Governors Island, New York; and the Bundanon Residency, in Australia. Recent exhibitions include The Coyote After-School Program at Melanie Flood .