As part of “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star,” Nari Ward’s Amazing Grace is on view in the New Museum’s adjacent space, Studio 231. Without the standard painting or sculpture paradigm, museum-goers and tourists usually ignore and misunderstand installation art. Surprisingly, Nari Ward’s installation is both accessible and consumable to its visitors.
At first, the gallery looks like a pile of trash, which is precisely the point of the space. The New Museum highlights the year 1993 and the unique art that was produced from this time of political and cultural upheaval. However, after spending some time sifting through the surface of the dirty strollers and hoses, the brilliance gradually reveals itself. Ward collected 310 abandoned strollers from the streets of his neighborhood in Harlem. The copious amount of arranged and broken, dirty strollers is bizarrely touching. The strollers, empty of children, allude to nostalgia and abandonment.
Ward lined up the clusters of strollers into two large circles, and nailed flattened fire hoses in between them, creating a weaved pathway (the visitor can actually walk on it and around the inner circle of strollers!) through them. The hoses draw attention to the ground and its uneven surface. From beneath the strollers a recording of gospel singer Mahhalia Jackson singing “Amazing Grace” plays. As the wall text explains, suffusing the installation with the song creates an uplifting and reverential tone, and this tone is definitely palpable. As visitors walk between the two circles of strollers and reach the center, the music builds, becoming louder and louder. Each stroller becomes a monument of the past, representing childhood or even memory lane and loss. The gospel notes quicken and with the notes the visitor is temporarily drawn into an alternate reality. When the visitor steps out of the circle and away from the music, the pile of strollers and hoses becomes just that: a pile of strollers and hoses, and nothing more. Its beauty is not lost in its medium; it is in fact touching because of the intentionality.
Originally installed in an abandoned house in Harlem in 1993, Amazing Grace becomes a tableaux of what would have been. The children are no longer sitting in their strollers, yet their voices linger and bounce off the walls in the gallery.
Nari Ward, Amazing Grace, 1993. Installation view: “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star,” Studio 231, New Museum. Approx. 300 baby strollers and fire hoses, dimensions variable. Private collection. Photo: Jesse Untracht-Oakner