Light of Freedom, 2020

“Freedom is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as ‘the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action,’ or ‘liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another: INDEPENDENCE.’

Freedom, it seems, is easily defined, infinitely elusive. The intense, unrelenting struggle for the happiness of some and abject oppression of others is a dance of death over centuries, in different settings, places, languages, and costumes. All of this, too, defines what it means to be an actor or individual on the American stage. To find yourself here and now is the sum of many decisions, and if you were born here, then none your own.”

What is Freedom? by Abigail DeVille

Installation view of Light of Freedom at Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York, NY.
10.27.2020 - 01.31.2021

New York, NY | September 25, 2020 — For Madison Square Park Conservancy’s public art commissioning program, artist Abigail DeVille will install Light of Freedom, a new work that reflects the despair and exultation of this turbulent period. The project is a twelve-foot high reference to the Statue of Liberty’s torch, and to the scaffolding that encased it during construction. DeVille has filled her torch with a well-worn bell, a herald of freedom, and the arms of mannequins, beseeching viewers. The scaffold, which prevents access symbolically as well as physically, also recalls a work site, an insistent image in the urban landscape. The torch itself refers to the light of democracy and its foundation in ancient systems of government by citizens. Formative to Light of Freedom are the words of abolitionist, author and statesman Frederick Douglass, who proclaimed in a 1857 address in Canandaigua, New York: “If there is no struggle there is no progress.” The artist, who maintains a studio in the Bronx, uses public space to explore overlooked narratives. In Light of Freedom, she will mark significant crossroads in the history of African-Americans in New York. This work recognizes and hallows the area’s earliest enslaved Africans, who were brought to New Amsterdam in 1626, and critiques the promise of democracy represented by the arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty, which were installed in Madison Square Park from 1876 to 1882. Light of Freedom also summons the current Black Lives Matter movement. As the organization that stewards historic Madison Square Park, the Conservancy has worked to address the question of how public art can respond in civic space to this unprecedented time.