Ficus Interfaith

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!”

—Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (1883)

The silhouette of her crown is recognizable to most Americans, emblematic of both freedom and despair. This one is traced from a foam visor souvenir. One of those mint green ones that you can buy at the gift shop or Times Square or on Amazon. We imagine it as a future archaeological artifact. In the future the actual foam visors are all in museums, or maybe a thrift shop or maybe both. The idea of freedom has been symbolized, translated, mutilated, reborn and mummified.

The cooling caskets are likely from the 19th century and were found in the basement of a 100-year-old funeral parlor in Pennsylvania. They are not identical, but we like that. When we first got them you could see the body stains of past occupants, left there to “cool” before an autopsy or embalming was performed. There was a small straw pillow in one of them too. Once covered in a thin layer of concrete they become the more permanent version of themselves: 21st century sarcophagi.

The two figurative works are based on prints by Rockwell Kent commissioned in 1930 by the American Car and Foundry Company (a railroad manufacturer) to use in an advertising campaign. We chose these images in an act of resuscitation, interpreting them as isolated symbols of both industry and fragility. Shadow becomes each figure, gliding precariously through night on a boat out to sea. Present are ideas we want to last forever, the courage of showing your true self to the world and then, diving into it.

The largest terrazzo in the show was first installed between two brick columns in the basement of the Sculpture Center building in Queens, an old trolley car factory on a dead end street a stone’s throw from the 59th Street Bridge. In this iteration, The 59th Street Bridge Song becomes a sort of future cave painting, salvaged from its birthplace and thrust into the now.

Nobody knows why a crescent moon is cut into every outhouse door. Maybe it’s there to let the moon shine in.

Ficus Interfaith is a collaboration between Ryan Bush (b. 1990, Colorado) and Raphael Martinez Cohen (b. 1989, New York City). Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Incident Report, Hudson, NY; Jack Chiles, New York, NY; Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Prairie, Chicago, IL; among others including Noplace at P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York, NY and In Practice: Total Disbelief at Sculpture Center, Queens, NY. In 2018, they were artists in residence at 2727 California Street, Berkeley, CA and Shandaken: Storm King, NY.