Nidhal Chamekh has been invited to participate in the High Line Plinth Proposals 2026, an international initiative organized by High Line Art in New York to identify future monumental public commissions for the renowned High Line Plinth.
Located on the Spur of the High Line at 30th Street and 10th Avenue, the Plinth is one of New York City's few public sites dedicated exclusively to rotating commissions of monumental contemporary sculpture. Since its inauguration in 2019, it has featured landmark works by Simone Leigh, Sam Durant, Pamela Rosenkranz, Iván Argote, and currently Tuan Andrew Nguyen.
Friction is among 62 proposals under consideration for the seventh and eighth High Line Plinth commissions, scheduled for 2029 and 2030.
"Friction is the monumental enlargement of a small sculpture from my recent practice. Drawing upon Édouard Glissant’s philosophy of "Frictions", the dynamic of (re)birth born from the traction together between two cultures- the work creates a tension between two major genealogies: Western classical statuary and the African ritual object.
The first fragment is an iteration of the Apollo of Mantua, an emblem of Western ideals of perfection, order, and reason. As the god of conquest and colonization, Apollo embodies a worldview that dictated artistic canons and lent its name to NASA’s most significant space missions. This marble figure, severed cleanly, is joined to a fragment of a Punu ritual mask (Gabon). The latter, a historical object of speculation and Western infatuation with so-called "African Art," now populates Northern museums, often disconnected from its original sacred function.
From this encounter emerges a dissonant figure. The work confronts two inherited regimes of classification: the "white sculpture" and the "black mask, the former celebrated in art museums, the latter long relegated to ethnographic collections. The sharp cut reinforces the impression of a forced, almost discordant accord.
Yet, unexpected continuities arise. By merging these two memories into a single body, Friction blurs cultural registers. Features extend from one fragment to another, and volumes respond to each other, creating a strangely familiar physiognomic unity. The vertical cut that both separates and unites the two faces evokes the fault line of the Atlantic Ocean. It recalls the forced trajectories of the transatlantic slave trade, where bodies and cultures were torn from their soil to be reassembled in the violence of a New World. Friction does not seek to erase this scar but to make it monumental. It gives form to migrations, those suffered in the slave-owning past and those persisting in the present, where identities are constructed through creolization and the collision of memories."
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We invite you to discover Friction and imagine it on the High Line Plinth. Share your thoughts on why this proposal is a meaningful addition to the High Line, New York City, and our contemporary moment. Your comments will be shared with High Line Art's curatorial team and help inform the selection of the final shortlist. |
