Focus on this artwork and discuss the Critical reception.
Scott Lynch of Gothamist, remarking on the pieces' diversity of inspiration, observed, "Both pieces allude to a wide swath of art history, from ancient African and Indian sculpture to contemporary works by the likes of Basquiat and David Hammons". He said that the sculptures created an "ominous but open-ended narrative, inviting visitors to explore their own thematic interpretations: subjugation and supplication, respect, fear, and/or adoration; social upheaval and displacement; gender, power, and 'memories of place.'"Martha Schwendener of The New York Times described the installation as "a spare and unsettling sculptural installation", that "ripples" with associations of "colonization, invasion, imperialism". She suggests that the work invites the observer to consider the sheer strangeness of extraterrestrial or "post-humanity" lifeforms as they would likely be experienced by humankind, but that such encounters may ultimately offer the possibility of a "melding of cultures and aesthetics that might be harmonious rather than imperialist."Describing the work as "eerie, other, unnerving, ambiguous, even alarming", Jerry Saltz for Vulture saw the work as a critique of the West: its "vivisected, gouged idol covered in blotchy graffiti could be from any photograph seen daily of the mayhem in the Middle East, just part of the carnage, interventions, and wars [Bhabha] has called a 'systematic demonization and humiliation of the people and their ancient and present Islamic cultures' ... [h]er Met installation is a vivid rebuke of what the West says to all the cultures it invades: We come in peace." He assessed the work as "among the best Met roof sculpture installations since the program began in 1987."
African The New York Times Indian David Hammons Gothamist Basquiat Vulture