Genesis Belanger’s Classically Inspired Public Art Is a Commentary on Modern-Day Unease

September 14, 2026 / Sophie Clearwater /

Genesis Belanger, Lady Justice Unbiased, 2026. Presented by Public Art Fund as a part of “Genesis Belanger: Heads or Tails” at City Hall Park in New York City through November 15, 2026. Courtesy of the artist, Pace Gallery and Perrotin. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY

Public sculpture has long commemorated heroes, consolidated national narratives or embodied religious and civic virtues, but as grand nationalistic stories began to fracture, that role has been increasingly scrutinized and challenged. Today, in a fast-shifting, polarized contemporary society, anything that enters public space beyond simple advertisements assumes, in some way, a political and social dimension. Public sculpture, more than simply attention-capturing urban decor, is expected to deliver a message, offer commentary or function as a community or societal activator, catalyzing reactions and discussions at different levels.

In her first public commission, Genesis Belanger grasped both the challenges and opportunities inherent in creating sculpture for broad engagement. On view at City Hall Park through November 15, her sculptural ensemble “Heads or Tails” offers an articulated commentary on the contemporary human condition, immersed in fast-shifting social and economic dynamics that have disrupted any fixed definition not only of the “public” sphere but also of individual identity and existence. The sculptural group, presented by Public Art Fund, is dense with psychological and symbolic meaning, yet Belanger succeeds in maintaining the playful, whimsical energy that makes her work accessible to different viewers, as all good public sculpture must be.

“I’m always trying to make work that resonates with a broad audience and feels honest and true in the way it depicts our present moment,” Belanger tells Observer. “The opportunity to make an installation that would be encountered by an even broader audience was really exciting.” She describes the project as a major departure from her previous work—it is her first public commission and one of the few occasions in which she has produced outdoor sculpture—but acknowledges continuities with the way she develops gallery and museum exhibitions. “I’m always considering the space and thinking about what kind of environment I want to create before building out the details and narratives through the additional sculptures. This project was similar, but the context was already dictated.”

Four stylized bronze waterbirds in pink, brown, blue and green stand amid the spray of a fountain, with a seated bronze figure visible behind them. — The exhibition pairs common park features like a flock of birds in the fountain and potted trees with two modern interpretations of the allegorical Lady Justice. Courtesy of the artist, Pace Gallery and Perrotin. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY

Belanger says she was given considerable freedom in terms of scale, provided the sculptures did not obstruct walkways or restrict access to the park. She was less interested in dominating the site than in integrating artworks into it so they would interact naturally with visitors and the flow of city life. At the same time, she could not avoid the political implications of the location.

For the two main figures, she drew on the tradition of Lady Justice and the broader history of public sculpture built around allegorical personifications of civic virtues. Rather than reproducing a conventional heroic figure in bronze, however, she questioned what such a symbol might mean today and confronted what it means to represent a woman’s body in contemporary public space.

“I feel that an allegorical personification of a virtue is probably the most ubiquitous form of public sculpture, and I saw an opportunity to make my own version and to consider what might make it a more relevant symbol for our moment,” Belanger explains. Here, as throughout her oeuvre, she depicts women’s bodies as fragments. “I think the experience of being a woman is that you are consumed in bits. You are reduced to one part and never taken in your totality.”

Her Lady Justice is assembled from distinct bodily components, with visible breaks that make the figure resemble a stack of parts, reflecting the contemporary fragmentation and dissolution of any idea of identity as a stable unity. At the same time, it exposes the long history of representing the female body through a relentless process of decomposing and recomposing parts and iconographies according to shifting artistic canons.

To further complicate this play of parts, Belanger intentionally used her husband as the model for the figure. “Women have been the artist’s muse forever, so I thought that, as the artist, shouldn’t my muse be a man?” she reflects, recalling how Michelangelo also used male models for female figures in the Sistine Chapel. This gives the sculpture a more muscular and ambiguous body, helping Belanger avoid a conventionally seductive or “titillating” representation. Further muddying immediate readings is the figure’s unbalanced stance: one foot, wearing a heel, appears more relaxed, while the other, bare foot, carries the body’s weight.

A green-patinated bronze figure with a fragmented female body kneels on a pedestal while holding up a reflective object in leafy City Hall Park. — Genesis Belanger, *Lady Justice Impartial*, 2026. Courtesy of the artist, Pace Gallery and Perrotin. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY

The hybrid body invites questions of gender fluidity, suggesting the seemingly endless possibilities of assembling identity beyond fixed binaries. “If everything is accessible to you, and you can assemble yourself to be whatever you want, then these binaries can break down and become much more fluid,” Belanger says.

The way one of the figures, Lady Justice Unbiased, holds an object in its hand, together with its self-conscious posture, makes it appear to be posing for a selfie—but the face is incomplete, even as the reflected image held in its hand appears whole. The other figure, Lady Justice Impartial, further exposes this sense of incompleteness, and perhaps a longing for fulfillment and stability, by extending an empty hand. The fact that both hands are out, empty, however, suggests it will be receptive and impartial in welcoming the truth. Belanger acknowledges that the figures suggest a reflection on people’s attempts to construct coherent digital identities and narratives around a sense of self and existence that feels increasingly fragmented and disorienting.

Meanwhile, her fountain intervention introduces a flock of birds that, in the tradition of theatrical garden sculpture, brings a lively presence to the water display while also carrying a more sobering symbolism, as they scavenge pennies from beneath the water. Pennies were traditionally thrown into fountains to make wishes, but after they were decommissioned, even wishing became more expensive, Belanger quips. She connects the work to the broader affordability crisis and to a fully financialized world in which everything is treated as an opportunity to extract unrealized value. “I wanted to create this flock of birds to open a question of why everything is more expensive… It is more expensive because we live in this fully financialized world, in which everything is viewed as an opportunity to extract unrealized value. I wanted the birds to collect even the smallest amounts of unrealized value, as they are scavenging the pennies and these last wishes from the fountain.” In the metaphorical narrative, the birds are stand-ins for private equity figures on nearby Wall Street, extracting even the smallest remaining forms of value from a capitalist system confronting its own failures.

Three potted fruit trees waiting to be planted complete the scene, prompting a reflection on our relationship with nature today as something increasingly mediated, appropriated, domesticated and reduced to an inanimate backdrop. “I wanted to engage in that conversation about artifice and nature’s role in the contemporary world,” she says, explaining how she developed the trees by examining decorative representations of plants in wallpaper and tapestry, then translating those flattened images into three-dimensional forms. “In the context of our digital lives, nature often feels like a backdrop for a selfie anyway. Does it even need to be real? Are we losing the ability to discern the difference?” Belanger suggests. These mediated, highly artificial simulacra of nature appear to be the only greenery available within the urban environment.

A stylized artificial fruit tree with teal branches, coral flowers and small yellow fruits rises from a pale blue vase mounted on a wheeled cart. — Belanger’s sculptures invite reflection on humanity’s connection to nature, our ability to discern real from fake and how civic values are represented in public spaces. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

The entire ensemble is a thoughtful remix of canons and tropes traditionally associated with art made outdoors, ranging from the classical statuary evoked by the surrealist-looking figures of Justice to the Baroque tradition of theatrical garden sculpture and the ornamental waterbirds that populated fountains and landscaped gardens in later periods. It is a playful, eclectic remix of stereotypes and idealizations that have become anchored in the collective imagination and remain immediately legible to viewers, while preserving an intricate entanglement of critical messages. Belanger “wanted to test whether it was possible to make public art that is complex without being alienating, but instead accessible and interesting.”

“I wanted to see whether it was possible to thread the needle. I wanted to engage with the complicated issues of our moment and, hopefully, present questions that might help others feel less alone, because they are also thinking about these difficult aspects of our politics and culture,” she adds. “At the same time, I wanted the work to be beautiful and fun, because that is what it feels like to be human.”

The result is a whimsical cacophony of meanings, aesthetics and messages, as disorienting as the world itself and the ceaseless flux of information to which we are exposed each day, making any sense of truth, justice, civil responsibility and even the self increasingly debatable and unstable. “Nothing is just one thing. It is all these complicated things mashed together. It is political, cartoonish, heartbreaking and fun, as much of our existence today.”