In the famously sparse courtyard of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, a garden has been planted to grow over the next two years. Conceived by artist and poet Precious Okoyomon, the elaborate installation invites visitors to approach a giant teddy bear’s butt and slide through its core, exiting through the mouth like a tongue.
During a press event held on an overcast Wednesday dotted with drizzle, the artist described the work with the line, “The rectum isn’t a grave, it’s just a portal.” The remark echoes Leo Bersani’s 1987 landmark queer theory essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?”
The installation transforms MoMA PS1’s barren courtyard into a site of imagination and bodily metaphor. Its playful structure and provocative imagery reflect Okoyomon’s interest in shifting the boundaries between nature, the body, and symbolic space.
