High Line Art Announces Fall 2025 Commissions, Including Works by Raven Halfmoon, Klara Liden, and Sopheap Pich

Klara Liden, Lay Day, 2025 (rendering).

Klara Liden’s Lugger Dumpster Will Float on the High Line, with More to Follow

The High Line today announced its new season of commissioned sculpture, which opens at the end of August with the installation of a new large-scale work by Klara Liden. To be on view on the park at 16th Street, Liden’s Lay Day engages with the High Line as an icon of industrial transformation. Lay Day’s installation will be followed in the fall by three sculptural seedpods by Sopheap Pich, and West Side Warrior by Raven Halfmoon. Each artist offers new public artworks that speak to the specific site of the High Line, from its history as a rail line to its current form as a haven for plant life.

“I’m so excited for the High Line’s visitors to experience each artist’s unique engagement with the park,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, who commissioned the artworks for the High Line. “Klara Liden, Raven Halfmoon, and Sopheap Pich each bring different entry points and perspectives for considering this green space built on a former elevated rail line, as well as the world around us.”

Klara Liden

Lay Day

August 2025 – September 2026

On the High Line at 16th Street

For the High Line, Klara Liden presents Lay Day. The work combines a vibrant commercial lugger dumpster affixed with a towering street lamp to evoke a sailing boat, floating high above 10th Avenue. “Lay day” is a term used in maritime law referring to a contractually agreed upon number of days allowed for loading or unloading cargo on a ship. In repurposing this term as the commission’s title, Liden alludes to the High Line’s past as a freight rail line, which delivered and collected goods from the various warehouses, factories, and meatpackers along the tracks. The use of a commercial lugger dumpster could also be seen as a reference to Chelsea’s non-stop construction, while continuing the artist’s practice of adopting recognizable utilitarian objects and distancing them from their conventional function.

Klara Liden is an artist who creates sculptural installations and videos in response to specific architectural environments. Liden studied both architecture and art, and is interested in exploring the power dichotomies at play in architecture and urban design. Her work often incorporates found objects and materials sourced from urban spaces to create temporary interventions accompanied by performative actions, a process she terms “rebuilding by unbuilding.”

Klara Liden (b. 1979, Stockholm, Sweden) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Sopheap Pich

Kânh Chhrôôl (Gluta Usitata); Khlông (Dipterocarpus Tuberculatus); Melembu

September 2025 – August 2026

On the High Line at 24th Street

For the High Line, Sopheap Pich presents Kânh Chhrôôl (Gluta Usitata), Khlông (Dipterocarpus Tuberculatus), and Melembu, a series of three stone and metal sculptures inspired by seedpods of the hardwood trees that stand in the garden of the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. On windy afternoons, these seeds circle down from the giant tree canopies like falling helicopters. The seeds also suggest a minimalist rendition of a landing bird. The wings allow the seeds to fly far away from their mother tree to eventually take root. These trees are now rare in the wild, as they are cut down by poachers for their valuable timber. The seed pods suggest the attention we must give to nature and all it touches, from natural and man-made disasters to human migration and displacement caused by transformations in society and the environment.

Sopheap Pich is an artist who primarily works with natural materials—bamboo, rattan, burlap, beeswax, and earth pigments gathered from around Cambodia— to make sculptures and installations inspired by bodily organs, vegetal forms, and abstract geometric structures. Through his interest in organic forms and traditional Cambodian craftsmanship, he explores themes of identity and displacement, reflecting on his own journey as a refugee and immigrant. Pich’s childhood experiences during the Khmer Rouge genocide of Cambodian people in the late 1970s had a lasting impact on his work, informing its themes of time, memory, nature, and the body.

Sopheap Pich (b. 1971, Battambang, Cambodia) lives and works in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Raven Halfmoon

West Side Warrior

September 2025 – August 2026

On the High Line at Little West 12th Street

For the High Line, Raven Halfmoon presents West Side Warrior, a towering bust of a Native female horse rider. Historically, busts have been commissioned to commemorate aristocrats, rulers, or military leaders. Halfmoon subverts these traditions, depicting an unidentified Indigenous woman with facial tattoos wearing a cowboy hat. While the work is a nod to the artist’s heritage and connection to the American West, it also references the High Line’s history. In the mid-19th century, the railway company employed men on horseback, called the West Side Cowboys, in an effort to reduce rates of pedestrian injury and death from street-level freight trains. Eventually, the cowboys were phased out, and the freight line was elevated off the street—creating what we now call the High Line.

Raven Halfmoon’s practice ranges from torso-scaled to colossal-sized stoneware, bronze, and stone sculptures that honor her Caddo heritage. Born and raised in Oklahoma, she was first introduced to traditional Caddo pottery techniques by a Caddo elder. The Caddo Nation is a Tribal Nation whose ancestral homelands encompass what is now large parts of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Caddos are known for their engraved, incised, and distinctly styled pottery, and hand-built various vessels using a coil method. Halfmoon uses this knowledge to inform her contemporary practice, combining these traditional techniques with references to current pop culture. With inspiration that ranges from ancient earthwork construction and Indigenous pottery to the monumental sculptures on Easter Island, Halfmoon examines the intersection of tradition, history, gender, and personal experience. She fuses Caddo imagery, such as stars or symbols representing the Red River, with contemporary gestures—tagging and glazing her work like a graffiti artist. Halfmoon’s expressive surfaces, marked with her deep finger impressions, assert her presence for all those who see the work, countering a history of silencing Indigenous voices.

Raven Halfmoon (b. 1991, Caddo Nation) lives and works in Norman, Oklahoma.

SUPPORT

Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and Charina Endowment Fund.

High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.

Major support of High Line Art digital infrastructure is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Additional support for Raven Halfmoon, West Side Warrior is provided by Agnes Gund.

ABOUT HIGH LINE ART

Founded in 2009, High Line Art commissions and produces a wide array of artworks on the High Line, including site-specific commissions, exhibitions, performances, video programs, and a series of billboard interventions. Led by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and presented by the High Line, the art program invites artists to think of creative ways to engage with the unique architecture, history, and design of the park, and to foster a productive dialogue with the surrounding neighborhood and urban landscape.

For more information on High Line Art, please visit thehighline.org/art.

ABOUT THE HIGH LINE

The High Line is both a nonprofit organization and a public park on the West Side of Manhattan. Through our work with communities on and off the High Line, we’re devoted to reimagining public spaces to create connected, healthy neighborhoods and cities.

Built on a historic, elevated rail line, the High Line was always intended to be more than a park. You can walk through the gardens, view art, experience a performance, enjoy food or beverage, or connect with friends and neighbors—all while enjoying a unique perspective of New York City.

Nearly 100% of our annual budget comes through donations. The High Line is owned by the City of New York and we operate under a license agreement with NYC Parks.

For more information, visit thehighline.org and follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram.

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