Nari Ward’s installation of 300 abandoned baby strollers culled from Harlem streets in 1993 is a far cry from the banks of stroller parking around the city’s more family-friendly neighborhoods today. Here, surrounded and entwined by flattened fire hoses (they were first displayed in an abandoned fire house) and displayed to the sounds of Mahalia Jackson’s ‘Amazing Grace,’ they’re emblems of a gritty, made-do urban existence. (At the New Museum’s Studio 231 space next door to the museum through April 21st)
Nari Ward, ‘Amazing Grace,’ installation view at Studio 231, New Museum, approx 300 baby strollers and fire hoses, 1993.
