Ai Weiwei’s Camouflage is part of a new public art commission programme at Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island
© Ai Weiwei. Rendering by Brooklyn Digital Foundry, courtesy of Camber Studio
Ai Weiwei's public art installation Camouflage goes on view 10 September at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, directly across the East River from the United Nations and in tandem with its 2025 General Assembly—the 80th session since its founding at the end of the Second World War. At the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park, designed by the architect Louis Kahn in 1973 and realised posthumously in 2012, Ai is draping the memorial to President Roosevelt in fabric the artist designed with silhouettes of cats to reinterpret ubiquitous camouflage patterns used as a means of concealment in wartime.
“It is a deeply militarized symbol,” Ai says of the tent-like structure, supported by scaffolding, that protects, or shrouds, the memorial celebrating Roosevelt's Four Freedoms—of speech, of religion, from want and from fear—espoused in his 1941 presidential address to the US Congress. “Presenting such an installation is necessary in a world marked by ongoing wars and the threat of even greater conflict.”