TAPIZ

TAPIZ is a 12-foot light sculpture presented in Harlem as part of No Longer Empty, its interwoven LED forms weaving the faces of 125th Street into a luminous tapestry that honors the neighborhood’s ongoing cultural and economic transformation and the convergence of communities that has defined Harlem across generations.

• Presented by No Longer Empty, an innovative curatorial project exploring new paradigms for making and presenting art in underutilized urban spaces, and sponsored by El Museo del Barrio, the nation’s leading Latinx cultural institution, TAPIZ was positioned at the intersection of two of New York’s most significant forces in community-centered art programming.
• Amorós drew the work’s central metaphor from the tradition of the tapestry, a hanging, multicolored, woven history, using it as a structural framework for a sculpture that weaves together the diverse faces and cultures converging on 125th Street into a single luminous field representing Harlem’s past, present, and future simultaneously.
• The commission was connected to the Tapestry residential building at the foot of the RFK Bridge in Harlem, developed by Jonathan Rose Companies and Lettire Construction Corporation, situating TAPIZ within the broader conversation about the relationship between real estate development, cultural investment, and community identity in rapidly changing urban neighborhoods.
• TAPIZ deepens Amorós’s sustained engagement with Harlem as a subject and site, connecting directly to FRENTE FEROZ on 125th Street and affirming her long-held conviction, rooted in her teenage years in Peru, that Harlem’s cultural, political, and social energy represents one of the most vital creative forces in American life.