Studio Bosco Sodi and Kasmin are pleased to announce Tabula Rasa, a public artwork and performance by international artist Bosco Sodi (b. Mexico City, 1970). Enacted over a single day on May 23, 2021, Tabula Rasa will begin at dawn in Washington Square Park, New York, with the installation of 439 small-scale clay spheres.
On view from 9am–1pm, the artwork will begin a second phase at 1pm, when New Yorkers passing through Washington Square Park will be invited to take home a single clay sphere from the installation, a gesture which allows each person to become a part of the performance. At sunset, once each of the works has been claimed by the participating public, the performance will come to a close.
The clay spheres comprising the artwork will be handmade by the artist, symbolizing one day of the COVID-19 pandemic’s duration. Bringing indigenous Mexican agricultural practices to the United States, the spheres are vessels for new life, containing within them three types of seed—corn, squash, and bean—which sustain and nourish one another, finding an equilibrium that provides balanced sustenance. A potent metaphor for the necessity of cooperation and mutual assistance in times of need, these symbiotic plants encourage reflection on our own interdependence and reliance on both one another and also, crucially, on the natural world we inhabit.
Loaded with symbolism concerning new beginnings, transformation, and creative possibility, Sodi’s Tabula Rasa is an offering, a gesture that acts to bring together the diverse individuals that make up the city’s community as New York embarks on a second year of uncertainty and disruption.
Continuing Sodi’s engagement in publicly-sited sculpture and representative of his abiding interest in organic processes beyond human control, Tabula Rasa translates from Latin to “clean slate”—an opportunity to start over without prejudice. Sodi’s belief that “Life will always prevail” is fundamental to Tabula Rasa, which is both a public artwork and a performance by the public, timed to coincide with the last frosts of winter as the city emerges into spring.
