#4: Hip Hop Sculpture

Happy back to school to all who celebrate…especially us artists who can finally return to the studio!

BIG NEWS: the next PUBLIC ART PARTY will take place on October 15th at the Sugar Hill Museum in Harlem!

I am so excited to be back at Sugar Hill after participating in the exhibition Structural Play last year. The panel is going to be excellent…stay tuned for more info and to purchase tickets.

Now back to the subject at hand: public art and hip hop…

My previous newsletter on this topic focused on murals and 2D public art that expresses, honors and/or is influenced by hip hop music and culture. This newsletter is all about SCULPTURE. 

The artists and work mentioned here are so interesting, they each deserve their own essay. No doubt there are many other amazing artists and works I wasn’t able to highlight. I hope you’ll click on the links below and learn more.

Bayeté Ross Smith - Hip Hop 50 Boombox

“I let my tape rock 'til my tape popped / Smoking weed and bamboo, sipping on private stock." - The Notorious B.I.G.

https://www.bayeterosssmith.com/

Let’s kick it off with Harlem-based artist Bayeté Ross Smith, whose Hip Hop 50 Boombox series and public Boombox sculptures both celebrate and actually play hip hop music. I listened to his mixtape, which accompanied his “Got The Power Boomboxes” installation at the Apollo and New Victoria theaters in Harlem, while writing this newsletter—you can listen while reading it!

From the artist: “Hip Hop 50 Boombox is a series of monuments, public events, & mixtapes that examine Hip Hop as a global liberation movement rooted in the history of the sugar, tobacco and cotton industries; and resistance to colonialism. These site-specific sculptural monuments are constructed out of sugarcane and cotton boomboxes. They play mixtapes made of people’s favorite freedom songs, their personal stories and interludes from historians discussing the history of the sugar, tobacco and cotton industries and their impact on the Americas, Europe and Africa.” 

This 10+ year long project engages the public in various ways: inviting viewers to interact with the sculptures themselves, listen to the soundtracks and mixtapes, contribute a song or oral history, or attend a live event. A former photojournalist, Ross Smith thoughtfully mixes (and remixes) stories, research and music to evoke hip hop and its deep and complex roots. In one track you can hear Ella singing “Take the A Train” overlaid with narration that includes colonial history and cultural analysis. 

Visually, the rectilinear towers, made of salvaged boomboxes or cast from sugar and cotton, are both powerful and fragile. To me, they slyly wink at (or maybe elbow) the very white male history of minimalism (think Richard Serra’s Corten blocks); evoke memories of giant boomboxes on the subway blasting KRS-One between splayed knees or hefted on shoulders; and reflect the cubic urban streetscape where hip hop was born. I’m also reminded of many African artists, like El Anatsui and Moffat Takadiwa, who repurpose discarded materials in their work.

I love the way these boombox sculptures celebrate the revolutionary, political origins of hip hop. Ross Smith says, “One thing I wanted to emphasize is that people don’t talk about how hip hop is a counterculture. So, the soundtrack that plays is a series of Pan-African and Pan-American hip hop freedom songs that illustrate that essential function of the genre as a global freedom and liberation movement. At this point, everything in the world has a little bit of hip hop in it, but I wanted to give light to the obscured, erased, and under-discussed parts of the genre.”

Hip hop’s subversive power is no joke, and here and abroad rappers have been attacked and even jailed for their lyrics. This is a big topic of conversation with my husband, composer and pianist Albert Marques (who you may have met running the bar at the April Public Art Party). His collaboration with Catalan rapper Pablo Hasél, who was convicted and imprisoned by the Spanish government for insulting the King of Spain in his lyrics, and Brooklyn-based rapper Samuel Omare, highlights how hip hop is still a potent and often dangerous way to speak truth to power. (You can read more about the project in Rolling Stone.)

Jahari Ortega - Big Hoops to Fill

“I want a girl with extensions in her hair. Bamboo earrings. At least two pair.” – LL Cool J

https://www.instagram.com/ja_hari713/?hl=en

This “door knocker earring” swing brings me back to 9th grade, Bell Biv DeVoe and Triple F.A.T. Goose puffy coats. What a funny, smart and playful way to celebrate all the women in hip hop—rappers, graffiti artists, DJ’s, fashion designers, fans and music producers–who are often left out of the official history. I am ready to take my kids to Boston just to try it out!

“Ortega’s sculpture draws upon the cultural weight of bamboo hoop earrings, an iconic style of jewelry worn by many women of color that originated from early hip-hop culture and fashion, worn by performers such as Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, Roxanne Shanté, and Queen Latifah, and featured in song lyrics by LL Cool J. As journalist Ivette Feliciano observes, these earrings ‘symbolize resistance and bear cultural significance [especially for] immigrant communities rooted in Indigenous and African traditions.’ ” - Rose Kennedy Greenway website

In fact, “Hoop earrings originated in Africa, dating back to Nubia, a civilization that existed in the fourth century in what is now present day Sudan. Earrings were seen as something that enhanced one’s beauty and sexuality” according to Yekaterina Barbas, Associate Curator of Egyptian Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Yet despite this long and royal history, centering women of color in public space is somehow still controversial in 2025. As we saw in the bizarrely contentious reaction to British artist Thomas J. Price’s 12 foot tall sculpture of a Black woman “Grounded in the Stars” in Times Square, everyone has an opinion on how and whether women of color should exist in public.

To Ortega, “Big Hoops to Fill” celebrates women and offers opportunities to “heal one’s inner child, cultivate and encourage healthy multigenerational relationships, and foster confidence in one’s identity and culture.” Joy, self-expression, community and pride suffuse this generous and inventive work, inviting all people to partake.

Sherwin Banfield - Hip Hop Icons

"Now I’m the King of the Rhyme, the radio’s my domain / With my DJ’s, we bring the pain." - Run DMC

https://www.sherwinbanfield.com/

Queens-based sculptor Sherwin Banfield may be best known for his Kool DJ Red Alert sculpture titled “YEEA-a-a-a-a-ah” in West Harlem’s Montefiore Square. If you grew up in NY or the tristate area anytime in the last 40 years, you’ve probably heard Red Alert spin (and yell) on Kiss FM. He created the first ever mixtape compilation with Africa Bambaata back in the 70’s, and in four decades on the radio, Red Alert was an early supporter of A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Black Sheep, Jungle Brothers, and many others.

Born in Trinidad and Tobago, hip hop helped welcome Banfield to Harlem as an immigrant. A graduate of Parson’s, he began making public art in 2017 after years of study and exhibitions here and abroad. Much of his work in the public realm celebrates hip hop. 

Banfield’s 2018 project “A Cypher in Queens” at Socrates Sculpture Park, “consists of three Audio Sculptures, each representing the sonic identities of three Legendary Fallen Artists from Queens, NY. One DJ (Jam Master Jay of RUN DMC) and two Emcees (Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest and Prodigy of MOBB DEEP). These three Hip Hop Icons were chosen for their individuality, unique style of delivery, excellence and contribution to the Art-form of Hip Hop.”

(PS: this art is not dead! Head to Union Square on Friday nights or livestream Legendary Cyphers from May to November.)

In 2021, he debuted “The G.O.A.T,” a sculptural tribute to LL Cool J in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, home to the rapper. “Botanical Boombox: Queensbridge,” installed at the Queens Botanical Garden in 2022, “is a Sustainable Mini Greenhouse Boombox sculpture that houses a miniature public housing ecosystem…that symbolizes the voice of voiceless” including audio by a local Hip Hop Artist. 

“Sky’s the Limit in the county of Kings, A Tribute to The Notorious B.I.G.” (2022) is a sonic sculpture that reflects Biggie’s larger than life talent and importance in hip hop history, especially at home in Brooklyn where his image is still found on murals, coffee mugs, t-shirts and tattoos. 

​Like an African king surveying his lands, adored by his subjects, and feared by his enemies, this sculptural portrait evokes the aesthetics of Zamunda, Wakanda, and of course, the borough of Kings: over his heart we read the words “Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way.” 

As Banfield notes, “The Notorious B.I.G. has such a lasting appeal because our Hip Hop culture recognizes his authenticity, his genius, his heart and his potential!  His authenticity mirrors the roots of Hip Hop, the voice of the voiceless, of disenfranchised black and brown youth who put their personal stories of hardship and fun on record." 

Eric Orr + Collab + Welder Underground - Rappin’ Max Robot

“I’m your hip hop lyrical robot and a real cool cat” - UB40

https://www.instagram.com/orrdesigns/?hl=en

Artist Eric Orr grew up in the Bronx, obsessed with comics and drawing. When his high school friend Jazzy Jay, later a hip hop pioneer, started the music label Strong City, Orr got the chance to design logos and artwork for golden-era hip hop artists. He started to develop his comic “Rappin’ Max Robot” about a young robot boy named Max who waged rap battles and listened to music on his boombox, interspersed with ads for a local pizzeria, record shop and video store. 

In 1986, with the help of artist Keith Haring, Orr was able to print his first issue: “Keith Haring bought an ad on the back page of the comic book and helped fund the first printing along with other family and friends. I was able to go to a local Bronx printer and printed 500 copies.” While only 4 issues were released, Rappin’ Max Robot became an icon of early hip hop culture.

Fast forward to 2024, when Brooklyn-based fabrication and design studio Collab came up with the idea to transform Max into an 8,000 pound steel and I-beam sculpture. Collab owners Marc and Adina Levin met Orr through their work on the Bronx’s new Hip Hop Museum and thought that Rappin’ Max Robot would make a great sculpture. To make this a reality, they formed Welder Underground, a non-profit that empowers a new generation of welders and metal fabricators through an innovative six-month “earn while you learn” apprenticeship program for young adults. This was the organization’s first project. 

The sculpture debuted at the Hip Hop Museum in August 2024, and after three months moved to Brooklyn Borough Hall Plaza. It will have a permanent home at the Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad in Paris.

It makes me so happy that young people got the opportunity to learn to weld and fabricate while honoring this legendary hip hop character, by a Bronx artist who was around the same age when he invented Rappin’ Max Robot.

Fabricators for the win!

Eto Otitigbe - Peaceful Journey

“Get up, party people, listen to this rap / Cause I'm about to go down and put my town on the map / MC Heavy D, delighted you'll be learnin / About the place where I rest, Moneyearnin' Mount Vernon” - Heavy D

https://www.etootitigbe.com/

Brooklyn-based sculptor Eto Otitigbe’s proposal for “Peaceful Journey” was selected from among hundreds by ArtsWestchester to honor local hero Heavy D, whose 1987 song of the same title celebrates his hometown of Mount Vernon. 

Abstract in style, the sculpture forms an arch made of Vermont Fantastico Marble, and both stainless and COR-TEN steel. Says Otitigbe, “If you look at the artwork, it doesn’t visually strike you with anything that directly relates to Heavy D’s lyrics or anything of that nature. But what it does speak to is the idea of innovation and the idea of transition.”

After a childhood in upstate NY and Nigeria, Otitigbe attended MIT, and is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture at Brooklyn College. A polymedia artist with an interdisciplinary practice, “his public art intersects history, community, and biophilic design by using parametric modeling and generative design to transform historical and cultural references into biomorphic forms and patterns that reference nature.”

In an interview in Westchester Arts Magazine, Otitigbe explained that “The hexagon is a signifier for strength and harmony. As one passes under the archway and looks up, the view of the sky is pixelated by a hexagonal grid. Even the surface of the metal will transform over time as the COR‐TEN steel weathers and changes color. The stone monolith also conveys a sense of balance and affirmation while its surface carries an organic fluid pattern; evidence of the stone’s transformation over time.”

One has to wonder what Heavy D, who died in 2011 at only 44 years old, would think about this abstract gateway. It is a “peaceful journey,” not a provocation. This sculpture doesn’t evoke nostalgia, political debate, hip hop history or amusement. Perhaps it’s best seen as a memorial closer to what you would find in a cemetery: stately, austere and quietly honoring a beloved (and much flashier) public figure.

It’s been fascinating to delve into the relationship between hip hop and public art. But I know I only scraped the surface. What did I miss? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please comment below! Reading this in your email? Click “Read Online” at the very top right of your email for the website and comment box.

Again, I can’t wait to see all of you on October 15th for the next PUBLIC ART PARTY! I hope to send out the invite next week. In the meantime, please save the date and get ready to dig deep into some of the hottest topics in public art today.

More soon,

Mia

Mia Pearlman
http://miapearlman.com