Times Square will be surrounded by a West Philly artist’s work all August

Times Square is getting a touch of Philly artistry.

West Philly-based artist Maia Chao has been Times Square’s Public Artist-in-Residence since 2023, having been invited to examine the behind-the-scenes experience of what is one of the busiest tourist areas in the world.

A photo installation and Midnight Moment presentation from her work will be on display through the month of August. The art will draw from her studies on the cleaning and beautification processes, and human behavior at the plaza.

“I’ve always been interested in infrastructure, the management of public space, and the sociology of different places,” Chao said. “Times Square itself was a funny place to be presented with because it’s what a lot of New Yorkers avoid passing through. I was coming to it looking at what the space has become as it became corporatized.”

Chao’s photo project “Case Subtype: Damaged/Nonfunctional” will present 30 photographs displayed on Bigbelly trash cans across Times Square. The photographs were taken by actual sanitation workers, who already document potholes, graffiti, and other abandoned objects as a part of their job.

“A lot of the work of the Times Square Alliance is to improve the reputation of Times Square from its history of being seedy or dangerous in the 1980s and 1990s,” said Chao. “A lot of that effort is about maintaining its appearance as clean and safe to visit. I came to that with a critical lens on what and who is deemed clean and safe.”

The title of her project references how workers mark found objects as “damaged/nonfunctional” when they upload the photos to their system. Details like the location and photographer are seen in small text in the corner of each photograph.

“People are used to seeing advertising [on trash cans] and [the art] might catch their eye when they’re putting something in the trash can,” said Anna Starling, director of Times Square Arts. “I’m hoping that people will understand or at least think about what is this, why it is there, and recognize the beauty in the everyday objects that you see.”

Some of the images on display include photographs of an abandoned bike chained to a pole, a rolling office chair next to a trash can, a spill of light blue paint on the sidewalk, and a pothole with a cone coming out of it.

“There was something appealing to me about thinking about the people making these strange narratives,” said Chao. “When you see a huge microwave on the street or an abandoned stroller, they feel poetic and narrative, and kind of like traces of people’s lives.”

In addition to the photo installation, there will be a restaging of Chao’s 2025 performance piece American Idle on August 14. The show comprises a group of actors playing Times Square archetypes, like tired kids, lost tourists, and influencers; all acting out their typical behavior. At the same time, identically dressed body doubles of each character mimic the other’s actions.

“Initially, the idea was for the pedestrians of Times Square to be able to watch themselves, so it would be a crowd watching a crowd,” said Chao. “Something that may seem spontaneous when one person is doing it, is all of a sudden seen as learned and programmed when two people are doing it in unison.”

Chao, who has a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology from Brown University, drew inspiration from the human behavioral patterns she noticed in real life and the 3D modeling program Crowds Pro. Typically used to simulate crowds for TV and movies, the system has a collection of characters making “idle” gestures, like clapping or scrolling on their phone.

“It’s a way of showing we’re all scrolling and taking pictures, and there’s definitely a pessimism to the ways we’re all becoming these robots or our attention is being conditioned to become increasingly fractured,” said Chao, a Rhode Island native. “But we also need to bring an observational, loving, and compassionate lens on the beauty of people as they are in their everyday selves.”

A three-minute video with portions of choreography from American Idle will be playing every night in Times Square throughout the month. This will be August’s “Midnight Moment,” which is a long-running program that displays digital art across all the billboards in Times Square, daily, for three minutes before midnight.

“Part of having public art in such large public spaces is having to be accessible to audiences. Maia’s project makes art and its concepts accessible which draws people in,” said Starling. “The repetitiveness and duplicative aspects of the performance are eye-catching. Then with the art on the everyday receptacles that people pass by, having those two together we felt would engage audiences in new ways.”

Chao has plans for her own home city, too. This fall, she will be premiering Waste Scenes, a video installation, at Penn. She will also be participating in the multi-medium exhibit “An Endless Meeting,” organized by Philadelphia arts collective Vox Populi, of which Chao is a member.

“I’ve been making live performances for the past few years and I think often there are flows and cycles to my practice,” said Chao. “In the next few years, I might be working in a different way, using one project to escape another, or to exercise a different muscle. I don’t know what medium I’ll be working in next, it could be sculpture. I’m excited to see what the ecosystem of my practice needs or calls for next.”