Public Art Fund Talks: Genesis Belanger

Join artist Genesis Belanger and Public Art Fund Senior Curator Melanie Kress for a conversation about Genesis Belanger: Heads or Tails, the artist’s first major public exhibition in New York. On view in City Hall Park, the presentation brings together three site-responsive sculptural installations that draw on familiar elements of the civic landscape to consider ideas of value, justice, authenticity, and artifice.

Belanger is known for psychologically charged sculptures and tableaux that examine consumer culture, advertising, and the ways objects can stand in for human emotions and experiences. For Heads or Tails, she extends this approach into the public realm, transforming park features into intriguing scenes: birds plucking pennies from a fountain, artificial fruit trees situated among living plants, and two reimagined figures of Lady Justice.

In conversation with Kress, Belanger will discuss the development of the exhibition, her transition from intimate works to large-scale outdoor sculpture, and how working in a civic space shaped her thinking about monumentality, symbolism, and the contradictions embedded in everyday life. Together, they will consider how sculpture can alter our perception of familiar public spaces and invite new ways of thinking about them.