“After the Fire”
17x30’
co-creators: Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Layqa Nuna Yawar
MoMA PS1
Queens, NY
2023
This project “After the Fire” is the culmination of a participatory mural project we Initiated in 2020, our collaborative, process-based approach) began with a series of workshops that engaged local Queens community groups: Transform America, Make the Road, and members of the
Shinnecock, Unkechaug, and Matinecock Nations. Participants discussed elements of society that they would leave behind in service of imagining a more just world steming from experience of organizing mutal aid and active change in their communities . The work portrays community members who were directly involved with this project. At the top right, three women emerge from a celestial background that features Orion’s Belt, also known as The Three Sisters. Framing the bottom of the mural, Indigenous plants of the lower New York region- such as wild columbine, wild beebalm, great blue lobelia, and morning glory Overlaid prismatic grids reference restructuring systems and rebuilding infrastructure to holistically support community needs. Fire, a recurring motif featured in the artists’ previous MoMA PS1 mural What Grows? (2022-24), appears within a child’s hand- invoked not as a symbol of destruction, but as an ignition of rebirth. In the artists’ words, Affer the Fire urges “envisioning new futures and rebuilding) communities as an act of self-preservation and audacious dreaming.
