iInstitute of Contemporary Art, PhiladelphiaUniversity City
Entryways: Saif Azzuz
Yurok artist Saif Azzuz fills ICA's Sansom Street windows with abstract graphics drawn from research into Philadelphia's natural history.
More in Philadelphia
The colours come from fire maps. Saif Azzuz's Yurok family plans controlled burns in northern California with drought and fire maps, and many of his paintings borrow their palette. For ICA he swapped in Philadelphia's own maps: the redlining maps of housing discrimination, maps of the city's uneven green space, and Pennsylvania drought maps.
Drawings of native plants grow up through those blocks of colour, his picture of land that is shared rather than owned. The title, Ehotama yu haki (I love this land), is in Lenape, honouring the Indigenous people of the land ICA stands on. It is printed on perforated window film made without PVC, the plastic most graphics this size use, and continues from the Sansom Street windows onto the mezzanine doors inside.
You see it from the sidewalk before you reach the door. Inside, entry is free, Wednesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm and until 8pm on Thursdays, and the windows stay up until 12 September 2027.
Look for
The Sansom Street windows
Look up from the sidewalk: mural-size imagery covers ICA's large street-facing windows, printed on perforated window film.
Philadelphia's redlining maps
The colour blocks behind the plants come from the city's housing-discrimination maps, alongside maps of uneven green space and Pennsylvania drought.
The native plants
Drawings of native plants grow across the map colours, the artist's image of land held through sharing rather than ownership.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You want a gallery show: this is window graphics, seen mostly from the street.
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Image credits
7
- Entryways: Saif AzzuzCourtesy of Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
- Marketing Medicine: The Art of Selling a CureCourtesy of Mütter Museum
- Creative Processing: Art in TherapyCourtesy of Mütter Museum
- Creating a City of MedicineCourtesy of Mütter Museum
- Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphiaajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Penn Museumajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Mütter Museum颐园居 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0