New York's Financial District Welcomes a Monument to Early Arabic Poets
The city parks department on Thursday revealed the multipart monument, named "Al Qalam: Poets in the Park," by French Moroccan artist Sara Ouhaddou. The piece, which is located inside Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza in the Financial District, honors what officials described as New York's first Arabic-speaking community, which took root from the 1880s to the 1940s, and its literary legacy.
The monument's centerpiece is a bright yellow 3D sculpture - a visual representation of the Arabic word "al-qalam," or "the pen," in an abstract alphabet created by Ouhaddou. The piece is covered in mosaics, along with plaques naming the writers it honors.
Two long, curved mosaic-covered backrests in the same shade of bright yellow were added to existing stone benches located south of the sculpture. They showcase excerpts from the work of nine writers in Ouhaddou's colorful calligraphy, including Elia Abu Madi, Nasib Arida and Kahlil Gibran.
The Washington Street Historical Society, which championed the artwork, also created an augmented-reality app to accompany the installation, allowing visitors to point their phones at the mosaic and hear or read the excerpt in Arabic and English.
"This community was one of the first who really questioned the idea of translation, and it's a core question when you're an immigrant: translating the culture you come from," Ouhaddou said at the unveiling. "So very quickly I asked myself, 'OK, now this young generation, us from the diaspora, how will we translate everything we inherited?' And so this is how I came up with the idea of creating my own alphabet, abstracts, impossible to read, really thinking of the future and thinking of being in the legacy of the poets, legacy of the artists that were here.
