A Six Mile Inquiry
Presented by Public Art Saint Paul, Wing Young Huie’s University Avenue Project: The Language of Urbanism, a Six-Mile Photographic Inquiry, will transform a major urban thoroughfare in Saint Paul, Minnesota, into a six-mile public gallery of over 400 photographs.  Wing’s images reveal the dizzying socioeconomic, cultural, and ethnic realities of the citizens who work, live, and go to school along this corridor that is jammed with storefronts, taverns, big-box retailers, blue-collar neighborhoods and condominium communities.

Built and still sustained by immigrant populations of the late 19th century, the University Avenue corridor is now home to one of America’s highest concentrations of new immigrants.  Blending documentary photography with revelatory statements by his subjects, Wing has created a tapestry of images and words that raise complex issues of race, class, gender, sexual preference, immigration, religion and cultural disconnection. The University Avenue Project is a chronicle the colliding and evolving American experience.  

More than than 70 store windows and surfaces form the gallery and stretch from the Minneapolis border to the Minnesota State Capitol.  Large mural scale images on building walls will be visible for blocks.A spectacular Project(ion) site created by Northern Lights.mn will nightly project Wing’s images onto billboard-size screens, accompanied by recorded soundtracks from local musicians.  

Monthly live performances at the site will invite the community to present music, spoken word, new media and personal narratives.

“But even in this condition, it is still a big modern city, and cities are the only source for inspiration for a new, truly modern art...The living language of our time, born spontaneously and naturally in accord with its spirit, is the language of urbanism...the city, incessantly moving and roaring outside our doors and windows, is an immense introduction to the life of each of us.”

Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago

 
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