Art and Design at Airports
I think that airports are an underappreciated wonder of our contemporary world. They are structured and operate in the exact same way across geographies, climates, cultures—and are a marvellous demonstration of human co-operation. The sense of familiarity felt at an airport instantly makes me at “home” whenever I step into one.
I found splendid passages on airports in the novel Flights (2007) by Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk (born 1962) that won the Man Booker International Prize in 2018. The novel is a celebration of our contemporary world of swift migrations. Tokarczuk imagines airports as more than travel hubs—they are, in fact, a special category of city-state. An airport-republic is a member of a World Airport Union. Within its non-discriminatory egalitarian space everybody can congregrate—young or old, in hat or robe, bronzed or burned or tanned or fluorescently white. Tokarczuk also poetically presents airports as channels through which dreams are realised and desires fulfilled: “The flight attendants, beautiful as angels, check to make sure we’re fit to travel, and then, with a benevolent motion of the hand, permit us to plunge on into the soft, carpet-lined curves of the tunnel that will lead us aboard our plane and onto a chilly aerial road to new worlds. That smile of theirs holds – or so it strikes us – a kind of promise that perhaps we will be born anew now, this time in the right time and the right place.”
Airports welcome and receive people, they also let them go farther in life and soar, they facilitate rebirths, they enable relationships. If airports are such integral arenas of our lives where many of us would be spending significant time—it makes sense to invest in their design and art.
The basic layout of an airport—baggage drop, immigration, security, lounges, restaurants and cafés, duty-free luxury stores—is engineered around human psychology. After the stressful and rushed process of checking in, we are allowed to relax and feel free. We are also somewhat manipulated to spend money (the design of casinos is sneakier in this regard with plenty of tricks—no clocks or windows, free drinks, labyrinthine paths, and so on).
Within this basic layout of an airport, there are some points and places where passengers are alert but also calm enough to take in the details of the environment around them, where they can pause and engage in introspection—like after security towards departures, and after arrivals towards immigration. Here is where a good deal of art can be displayed. These spaces are suitable for quick, easily comprehensible visual introductions and encapsulations of the culture/society ahead or behind. It is also where those with authority may choose to make big and important statements.
Searching for airport art, I have discovered that it is a field of rapid growth and experimentation. Several cities around the world feature noteworthy exhibits. At the Chicago O’Hare International Airport, we find “Reach” by artist Hank Willis Thomas, known for his work on racial discrimination and injustice. In this simple giant white sculpture two hands extend towards each other with ease, a powerful gesture of connection and peace against the backdrop of political divisiveness.
The art displayed at the Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru (the city of Bengaluru or Bangalore in Karnataka in south India is the Silicon Valley of the country) communicates both heritage and contemporary expressions, alongwith commitment to sustainability demonstrated by lavish gardens. Two interesting works here as “Spiral of Life” by Anupama Hoskere and “Structure” by Saravanan Parasuraman. The first presents the “navrasa” (nine emotions) of Indian classical dance through the personas of traditional female puppets—Sringara (love), Hasya (laughter), Karuna (sorrow), Raudra (anger), Veera (courage), Bhayanaka (fear), Bibhatsa (disgust), Adbhuta (wonder) and Shanta (peace). The second shows organic forms realised through metallic material, coming from a sculptor who generally explores the theme of “accumulations” in his projects, referring to the way in which one gathers experiential knowledge of oneself and of the world as one moves through life.
Down in Wellington, New Zealand, a giant sculpture of Gollum (from The Lord of the Rings) became a fascinating celebration of literature, cinema, landscape and tourism. It was displayed from 2012 to 2016. In Denver, Colorado, mural display by artist Leo Tanguma goes back to the early 1990s. The work “In Peace and Harmony with Nature” is inspired by the social realist murals of Mexico and addresses the destruction of the environment. The first half of the mural shows children expressing sorrow over the annihilation of life, as the second half depicts humanity coming together to rehabilitate and celebrate nature. Tanguma’s other work at the airport is on violence and peace at a global scale and the acknowledgement of local and national cultures. (Vivid and dramatic, these murals have attracted visitors but unfortunately, also became the hotbed of conspiracy theories.)
As we see, airport art is an evolving field. Installations, sculptures, paintings, murals, mixed media, digital art—these transportation centres provide ample room for the creation and exhibition of every type of art, and no lack of traffic. It would be interesting to see this enterprise grow further, and airports someday achieving a status as elevated as museums and public art galleries on the issue of creativity. It would be a good development if airport art becomes a serious domain of healthy intra-national and international competition—where cities and countries may aim to show off and outdo each other—quietly, strategically and non-coercively through the deployment of soft power (cultural expression) rather than hard power (military might).
Written by Tulika Bahadur
