Blender

The art project, Blender, by Hidemi Tagaki came to the plazas and visitor center of Times Square for the month of August 2011. Her bright and saturated images of immigrant food products collected from different boroughs in New York City were the first public art project on the sides of trash receptacles stationed from 42nd to 47th Streets in the Broadway Plazas. All 95 photographs ran as a video installation on 7 screens in the entrance to the Times Square Visitor Center. In front of millions of tourists who may never venture outside central Manhattan, Tagaki's project celebrated the diversity of New York's immigrant cultures through the simple designs and languages of packaged foods gathered through her many visits to small neighborhood groceries in every borough.

“The look of these food packages often has an old-fashioned feel: bright, saturated colors and outmoded designs that are rare both in Japan, where I’m from, and America, where I now live. Through this project I hope to show that art can transcend time and language even through the simplest imagery found on a candy wrapper. Blender is a lens into New York’s immigrant communities and cultures” -- Hidemi Takagi