NYC/MTA : YYC/LRT

There’s a wistful theme of travel in this decommissioned Canadian LRT (light rail transportation) car transformed as an homage to New York City subway cars, a birthplace of graffiti. This video is a pretty exciting introduction to Bryan Faubert’s NYC/MTA:YYC/LRT Pandemic Liminality. NYC stands for New York City, and YYC is the airport code for Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Liminality is a transitional situation, a threshold, neither here nor there, maybe one foot in both. The interconnected beings in the windows are plasma torch-cut (by hand) sheets of steel, representing cross-cultural, ethnically diverse, and gender fluid figures. At night, shadows of the beings are projected on the ground around the car and viewers walking around it suddenly become part of the art as they join the shadow figures. The artist hopes people will think about concepts of place and how people construct meaning around places.

Our AWB grant will help Bryan finish and move the sculpture to a new location, where there’ll be workshops, artist talks and lectures. The new location is right across from the actual LRT line, in the liminal space between a skateboard park and a senior citizens center. As Bryan says, “This work is to reflect a community made up of everyone from all walks of life. There is a place for all to enter, and I make this sentiment literal. Everyone can become part of the whole, and I [invite] the viewer to contemplate this. Where do I fit into the whole? How am I a part of this community? How would I like to become more involved in the discourse of daily life?”

Questions worth pondering no matter where your awesome journey takes you.