Anicka Yi Debuts 19-Column Microbial Installation at Storm King in Largest Outdoor Project
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · May 21
Anicka Yi Debuts 19-Column Microbial Installation at Storm King in Largest Outdoor Project
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · May 21
Nineteen six-foot acrylic cylinders filled with pond scum, algae and bacteria debuted May 17 at Storm King Art Center as Anicka Yi’s “Message From the Mud.”
The microbial colonies had been cultivated under UV grow lamps since August 2024, using bacteria, water and sediment drawn from a nearby lake at the Hudson Valley sculpture park.
Yi arranged the columns around a kidney-shaped gravel pit that will become a pond, extending the work into a living landscape she hopes will attract frogs and turtles.
At 54, the Seoul-born, New York-based artist calls it her largest outdoor project yet, blending plastic and concrete with Storm King’s own microbiome put on display as abstract color.
The installation adds a biologically active work to a site better known for monumental sculpture, pushing Storm King’s outdoor art program further toward hybrid forms of art and ecology.
What happens to a living sculpture when the artist's work is done and nature takes over?
Is imprisoning a microbiome in glowing columns a celebration of nature or a warning about it?