Towering homage to Bamiyan Buddhas rises over Manhattan’s High Line

The Art Newspaper reported that Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen has installed a 27-foot-tall sandstone monument on the High Line Plinth at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards as an homage to Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The work is titled “Salsal” (also referred to as “The Light That Shines Through the Universe”), after the local nickname for the larger 6th-century Buddha, and will remain on view for about a year and a half. Nguyen added two monumental steel hands that float slightly away from the sandstone arms, cast from melted-down artillery shells sourced from Afghanistan, with gestures meant to symbolize fearlessness and compassion. High Line Art director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani said the sandstone material evokes art history in contrast to the site’s steel-and-glass surroundings, and both she and Nguyen noted the project’s heightened resonance amid recent and ongoing wars, including Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the current U.S. and Israeli war on Iran.

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