Sitting Pretty offers a critical yet slightly absurd reflection on the pervasive use of hostile architecture in city spaces. The work focuses on the removal of anti-sitting spikes from a subway station entrance, a space used by the city’s homeless population as shelter from the rain. This action is a small gesture of liberation, allowing people to sit, rest and reclaim public space that was designed to exclude them.
The anti-sitting spikes are then fabricated into flower pots, filled with plants reclaimed from a garden of a nearby new development, a towering glass and plastic beacon of gentrification. These flower pots were then reinstalled back into the station, subverting the spikes' hostile intent by creating a more welcoming space and adding greenery to a previously barren area. This intervention critiques how cities increasingly use architecture to police behaviour and marginalise vulnerable populations. It also highlights the absurdity of such measures, subtle interventions meant to prevent sitting that ultimately fail to address the deeper societal issues of homelessness and inequality.
Assisted by Epos 257 and filmed by Filip Marysko.
Reclaimed anti-sitting spikes, reclaimed plants. Varied dimensions. 2024.
Reclaimed anti-sitting spikes, reclaimed plants. Varied dimensions. 2024.
Reclaimed anti-sitting spikes, reclaimed plants. Varied dimensions. 2024.