Protective Measures

Rose B. Simpson is getting ready for a “communal-style” corn-dance with her 7-year-old daughter. “I’ve participated in dances at least several times a year, my entire life,” she says of the Pueblo ritual. “It's important for me to show my daughter, and make sure that she starts actively participating.”

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It’s a sense of protection and mentorship that is echoed in her new public installation at Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, Seed. The piece consists of seven, highly stylized figures, composed out of jutting geometric steel components, each stretching 18 feet tall, and positioned in a circle, their faces pointing outward. The Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico-based artist describes these as sentinels; guards intended to keep watch. The number seven has multiple levels of meaning, as Simpson says, both as the seven sisters constellation, known as the Pleiades, and symbolizing the seven directions: north, south, east, west, up, down, and center.

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At the center of Simpson’s circle is a naturalistic figure of a woman, visible from the hips up, as though partially buried in the ground. “I was thinking about how parks in the city are a place where you can find your humanity, or your relationship to something other than human-centric,” says the artist, who adds that coming from her rural home, visiting the city feels jarring.

The female figure, as Simpson imagines it, finds protection within this circle. “She's able to sink down into the earth, to be a part of the place, to remember where we come from. “The seven sentinels are watching over so she can close her eyes,” continues the artist. “She can be safe, she can be present, and do the work that is vulnerable and intimate with oneself.” Then, the third and final component of Seed: seven faces at child height on the inside of the sentinels, all gazing toward the central figure. 

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“They're watching her because, as a parent, I've realized that I have to demonstrate to my daughter how to heal, and how to bow, and maintain health in my life, whether that's spiritual, psychological or physical,” Simpson says. Though tender in its messaging, the towering installation that is Seed holds its own alongside the formidable cityscape surrounding the park. It’s a testament to the sturdy, daunting forms, welded from massive sheets of steel, secured together by bolts and rivets, that all together bring Simpson’s vision to fruition.

When she’s not mining such topics in her art, Simpson splits her time between the more macho pursuit of vintage-car restoration, though that may have also come about as something of a defense mechanism. “I've struggled with gender, because I felt unsafe in presenting myself as female,” says the artist. “I’ve done a lot in my life with a masculine focus because I think I've been looking for protection and strength and ways to not feel victimized. I intentionally made this figure female because I wanted to demonstrate and portray a safe, vulnerable being in a space like a city like New York.”

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‍Rose B. Simpson's Seed is on view until September 22, 2024 at 11 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10010. A concurrent installation is on view at Inwood Hill Park at Payson Ave. and Seaman Ave., New York, NY 10034.

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