High Line Art announces the park’s Spring season of bodies, labor, and infrastructure

Katherine Bernhardt, Spring Cleaning, 2026.

The High Line announced the Spring 2026 season of new art commissions and video exhibitions, created by internationally-recognized artists, that will be presented to millions of parkgoers over the course of the year.

The High Line’s new sculptural commissions open in April with Patricia Ayres’ first-ever outdoor installation of three stacked biomorphic forms, and continuing throughout the month and into May with a new giant, dripping corn creation by Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and three figures in various forms of labor and performance by Derek Fordjour. These artworks offer unexpected and provocative perspectives on the ways humans adapt and are in turn adapted by their bodies and the natural world—physically, socially, and otherwise.

“With each new commission and each artist’s unique way of interpreting the world we live inand shape, I learn so much, from topics as wide-ranging yet still connected as the human body, agriculture, and cultural expression,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art. “I look forward to seeing how these new artworks by Patricia Ayres, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and Derek Fordjour will take on fresh meaning as the park’s foliage and visitors emerge and change around them.”

In March, painter Katherine Bernhardt will brighten up the High Line’s billboard at 18th Street with the presentation of Spring Cleaning, a new work featuring her trademark highlighter hues, located at the gateway to the Chelsea art district.

High Line Channel—the only open-air multimedia program in NYC accessible to the public year round—continues its rotating slate of video exhibitions in the covered passageway on the park at 14th Street with the global premiere of Leaking Ocean and two other video works by Saba Khan in March. Curated by associate curator Taylor Zakarin, Khan’s exhibition examines the life-changing elements of water and the fraught politics of its distribution in Pakistan. An artist talk with Khan and Zakarin will take place on March 12. Following in May, the Channel will screen Fantasy Futbol, curated by assistant curator Constanza Valenzuela, a selection of soccer-themed videos by Marianna Simnett, Filip Kostic, and Ana Hušman, just ahead of the World Cup games.

HIGH LINE COMMISSIONS

Patricia Ayres

2-18-5-14-4-1-14-3-12-15-14-6-5-18-20;

7-5-18-20-18-21-4-5-8-5-9-6-20-1; and 2-15-14-1-16-9-14-1

On view April 2026 – March 2027

On the High Line between 19th and 20th Streets, Patricia Ayres presents her first ever outdoor installation, a series of three sculptures entitled 2-18-5-14-4-1-14-3-12-15-14-6-5-18-20; 7-5-18-20-18-21-4-5-8-5-9-6-20-1; and 2-15-14-1-16-9-14-1. The towering works expand upon her interests in increasing scale, bodily form, constraint, and material resistance. The bulging structures resemble a patchworked-cadaver version of a dress form, a model of the ideal human torso used by dressmakers and designers for fitting and sewing clothing. The titles are each a cipher for the names of saints, translated into a set of numbers akin to those given to prisoners, and reminiscent of serial numbers, or clothing sizes. The numbered forms reference Ayres’ upbringing in the Catholic church, women’s fashion standards, and the carceral system, and serve as a repudiation of the bodily constraint and coercion inherent in each. She steeps and soaks her surfaces with layers of pigment combined with anointing oil, altar wine, and iodine, giving them their wounded, fleshy appearance. Through this process, the sculptures become symbols of martyrdom and sacrifice—swollen vessels of suffering that have been bound and manipulated into total anonymity.

Ayres is known for her fleshy, bandaged, and anthropomorphic sculptures. Drawing from her formal training as a fashion designer, the artist creates structures made of wood and foam covered in fabrics such as elastic, synthetics, and straps, building forms that evoke the human body. Stitched, stained, and wrapped, her work blurs the line between skin and garment, suggesting both strength and vulnerability. Ayres repurposes military-grade equipment—such as harness hooks and heavy-duty elastic—to evoke the latent imagery of bondage and physical subjugation. She manipulates these elements with physical force, shaping them to appear bound, bruised, or stretched. The result is simultaneously unnerving and deeply human.

Patricia Ayres (b. 1975, New York, New York) lives and works in New York, New York.

Ximena Garrido-Lecca

The Golden Crop

On view April 2026 – March 2027

To be presented on the High Line at 23rd Street, Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s The Golden Crop is a nine-foot corn cob water fountain, made of bronze. Corn holds a central position in pre-Columbian mythology and was considered the origin of humanity by the Aztecs and Maya. It also is one of the most important crops in the global economy, and is often genetically modified to tolerate pesticides like glyphosate. Glyphosate has sparked health and environmental debates effects on human health and the environment, such as river contamination. Garrido-Lecca references this herbicide, coloring the water that trickles down the corn and between its kernels to have a neon yellow hue, a reference to the toxic chemical and its effects on runoff water sources, particularly those that communities use for drinking, fishing, and recreation. The artist also highlights the way industrial farming and GMO corn have impacted the existence and strength of native varieties, risking the erosion of cultural heritage associated with these crops, ultimately, challenging the viewer to reconsider the social, health, and environmental costs of our interconnected modern world.

Garrido-Lecca uses sculpture and installation to highlight the complex relationship between indigenous knowledge, colonial history, and modern industrial systems. She foregrounds the historical landscape of her native Peru in her practice, yet she draws connections beyond those borders to consider the global impact of resource exploitation. Central to her recent work is her ongoing research into the “botanical diaspora”—the global dissemination of plants first domesticated by indigenous cultures—tracing the movement of life, capital, and power across time and soil.

Ximena Garrido-Lecca (b. 1980, Lima, Peru) lives and works between Mexico City, Mexico and Lima, Peru.

Derek Fordjour

Titles to be announced

On view May 2026 – April 2027

For the High Line, Fordjour presents three painted bronze sculptures depicting Black figures—including a boxer and a waiter—alongside his High Line Commission mural, Backbreaker Double. These figures mark a departure from his painted scenes of collective gatherings, foregrounding individual athletes and workers that are shaped by different yet interconnected performance economies. The boxer and the waiter appear as parallel archetypes: one engaged in the spectacle of sport, the other in the choreographed labor of service. Both occupy roles historically framed as pathways to mobility and visibility for Black Americans, while also remaining deeply entangled with systems of discipline, consumption, and control. Fordjour positions sportsmanship and service work as forms of performanceship and as an assertion of individual agency and a demand for endurance.

Fordjour’s practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, and performance to explore the intertwined histories of power, labor, representation, and the African American experience. Best known for his vibrant paintings layered with everyday materials such as cardboard, newspaper, aluminum foil, and glitter, Fordjour pockmarks and reveals textured surfaces that embody material history and repurpose practices. Through this collage-based process, he constructs exuberant yet introspective scenes often populated by athletes, musicians, and other performers, archetypes of spectacle and commerce. Figures are often depicted mid-action, highlighting both the vitality and vulnerability of the human form. Fordjour places these figures within lively scenes where their interactions with one another underscore his exploration of race and systemic inequity, juxtaposing individual achievement against the broader structural challenges historically faced by Black individuals and communities. His works oscillate between celebration and critique, evoking emotions that range from joy to melancholy, where effortless grace and conspicuous effort coexist and reveal the tension between personal striving and collective expectation.

Derek Fordjour (b. 1974, Memphis, Tennessee) lives and works in New York, New York.

HIGH LINE BILLBOARD

Katherine Bernhardt

Spring Cleaning

On view March – April 2026

For the High Line’s 18th Street Billboard, Katherine Bernhardt presents Spring Cleaning, a vivid, crowded still life that stages an encounter between domestic labor, consumer goods, and everyday ritual. Cleaning supplies—toilet paper, glass cleaner, Ajax, dish soap—sit atop a kitchen counter alongside bananas, orchids, butter, a to-go coffee cup, and a fuchsia sink faucet. Rendered in Bernhardt’s signature palette of saturated color and loose, assertive brushwork, these familiar objects hover between order and chaos, utility and excess. The composition suggests both renewal and repetition: the promise of cleanliness set against the inevitability of mess, consumption, and routine.

Bernhardt is known for her bold, energetic paintings that merge everyday consumer imagery with loose, expressive mark-making. Working primarily in painting, Bernhardt draws from mass culture including cartoon characters, brand logos, fast food, tropical motifs, and pop icons, layering them into compositions that feel spontaneous, humorous, and deliberately unpolished. Her practice embraces excess, repetition, and imperfection, using bright colors and gestural brushstrokes to mirror the visual overload of contemporary life. By collapsing distinctions between high art and popular culture, Bernhardt treats familiar images not as symbols to decode but as materials to play with, reframe, and exhaust.

Katherine Bernhardt (b. 1975, St. Louis, Missouri) lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.

HIGH LINE CHANNEL

Saba Khan

Leaking Ocean

On view March 6 through May 5, 2026

For her exhibition at the High Line Channel, Saba Khan presents three video works—Leaking Ocean (2025) in its global premiere, Water Lords (2023), and The Dolphin (2023)—that explore the life-changing elements of water and the fraught politics of its distribution. Her research takes her from the “Third Pole” glaciers of northern Pakistan to the industrial barrages of the Indus River. In presenting these three works together, Khan examines the diverse ways humanity attempts to control water: from the spiritual “glacier-grafting” rituals of the Balti communities, to the massive colonial and post-colonial-era dams and barrages designed to tame the Indus.

Khan’s practice is grounded in the intersection of art, ecology, and colonial history, often fueled by immersive fieldwork and expeditions. She explores bureaucratic structures and the legacy of “Third World Modernism”—a post-colonial aesthetic that used grand infrastructure to project visions of national progress and independent statehood. Khan’s work satirically weaves together language and imagery relating to memorials, monuments, and public projects to critique how “modern” monuments often mask environmental decay and entrench class divides.

An artist talk with Saba Khan and associate curator Taylor Zakarin will take place at the High Line on March 12.

Saba Khan, (b. 1982, Lahore, Pakistan) lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan, and London, United Kingdom.

Fantasy Futbol

Marianna Simnett, Filip Kostic, and Ana Hušman

On view May 6 through July 5, 2026

Fantasy Futbol brings together three films by Marianna Simnett, Filip Kostic, and Ana Hušman that explore the drama and myth surrounding the world’s most watched sport, soccer, or football as it’s known beyond the United States. Throughout these works, football is never simply played—it is reenacted, restaged, narrated, streamed, and choreographed. Rather than documenting the sport itself, the films treat football as a performative and mediated system that produces identities, hierarchies, and collective myths through repetition, spectacle, and narrative control. In WINNER (2024), Marianna Simnett stages football’s emotional economy as a three-act dance, where dancers shift between hooligans and players to expose the sport’s choreographed power structures. Filip Kostic VS Filip Kostic (2019) by Filip Kostic unfolds as a Twitch livestream in which the artist plays FIFA against Serbian footballer Filip Kostić, competing for ownership of an Instagram handle and revealing competition as a struggle over digital visibility. In Football (2011), Ana Hušman reconstructs Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal through commentary alone, showing how football myth is produced through voice and repetition. Together, the films frame football as a cultural script sustained by mediation, performance, and belief.

Ana Hušman (b. 1977, Zagreb, Croatia) lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia.

Filip Kostic (b.1993, Beograd, Serbia) lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Marianna Simnett (b. 1986, London, United Kingdom) lives and works between Berlin, Germany and New York, New York.

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 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 the Speaker’s Office.

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

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 a public park on the West Side of Manhattan operated, maintained, and funded by the nonprofit conservancy Friends of the High Line. Through our work with communities on and off the High Line, Friends of the High Line is 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 operating budget comes through donations. The High Line is owned by the City of New York, and we operate the park under a license agreement with NYC Parks.

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

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