This summer, the High Museum of Art will unveil a large-scale, interactive design installation by contemporary Mexican designers Héctor Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena on the Woodruff Arts Center’s Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza. The site-specific work will launch a two-year initiative to activate the outdoor space.
On view July 18 through Nov. 2, “Mi Casa, Your Casa” will invite participation through recreation, social interaction, performances, art-making activities, and special events co-organized with local partner institutions. The project will feature more than 35 three-dimensional, open frames in the shape of a house installed throughout the Piazza and around the Woodruff Arts Center campus, both in clusters and as singular forms. The vibrant red 8 x 8 x 10.5-foot steel frames will be installed in two different patterns: one through the summer season to coincide with the High’s major exhibition “Dream Cars: Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas,” and another in the fall for the opening of the Alliance Theatre and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra seasons.
As part of its new Friday Night Lates series, the High will present evening programs featuring rotating artistic pairings and collaborations, live music, and other performances, which will take place both inside the Museum and on the Piazza. Swings, easels, bins of chalk, and buckets of bubble water, among other elements, will offer daytime leisure and recreation options.
Throughout the project’s duration, the High will also collaborate with artists and performers across the Atlanta arts spectrum, from colleagues at the Museum’s sister divisions (Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Arts for Learning) to Atlanta arts groups beyond the Woodruff Arts Center, including CORE Performance Company, gloATL, Instituto de México, The Object Group, Sonic Generator, T. Lang Dance Company, Théâtre du Rêve, Wabi Sabi and WonderRoot. The High’s staff will work closely with these institutional partners to launch a dynamic programmatic vision.
In addition to “Mi Casa, Your Casa,” the High has commissioned Esrawe and Cadena to design a second intervention for the Piazza for the summer of 2015, which will be inspired by the public’s interaction with this year’s project. After these initial two years, the High and the Woodruff Arts Center will explore other potential activation projects for the outdoor space.