Between the Future Past

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Title of Works

Between the Future Past

Artist

Layqa Nuna Yawar

City of Origin

Lives and works in Newark, NJ

Medium

Permanent Art Installation; Acrylic paint and inkjet print on fabric mounted to aluminum panel

Year Completed

2021-22

Location of Artwork

Concourse, Center Pier

Artwork Description

18’h x 350’ w
Commissioned by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and Munich Airport NJ, in partnership with Public Art Fund

Photo: Nicholas Knight, Public Art Fund 

Commissioned by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and Munich Airport NJ, in partnership with Public Art Fund

Between the Future Past celebrates the abundant diversity of Newark, New Jersey, and the New York metropolitan area. Layqa Nuna Yawar has reimagined the format of a historical mural to reflect an ongoing cycle of time that embraces past, present, and future. Drawing on his indigenous heritage and Kichwa language, he sees the mural as "a looped narrative that can be read from right to left and left to right." The artwork features native flora and fauna, emphasizing nature as a symbol for growth. It is populated by a wide range of individuals across time, culture, race, and gender, highlighting narratives of personal accomplishment and perseverance that have often been overlooked. People brought by successive waves of global migration, including those from Black, Brown, Asian, and Middle Eastern backgrounds, as well as Indigenous people, are represented in this expansive vision. From airport workers to poets to LGBTQ+ heroes, Layqa Nuna Yawar's mural rethinks who should be celebrated publicly, proposed that all individuals are equally remarkable in their humanity.

Artist Background

Layqa Nuna Yawar creates art deeply informed by his own immigrant and multicultural identity, confronting racism, injustice, and xenophobia through imagery that uplifts those targeted by these prejudices. Prioritizing public art in his practice, Yawar uses the mural as a platform to explore and celebrate the intricacies of these subaltern identities, emphasizing unity, diversity, history, and cross-cultural exchange in works that center the communities in which they are placed.

Yawar has had exhibitions at the Newark Museum of Art, The Newark Public Library, the Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education, and more, including in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, San Juan, and Tehran. He has also painted murals throughout Newark and New York as well as in Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, and Canada. He was recently awarded a Monument Lab Research Residency, a Creative Catalyst Fund Fellowship by the City of Newark, and a Moving Walls Fellowship by Open Society Foundations.

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Date

November 14, 2022