HAPPY JOYLANTA

This immersive environment within a monumental celebratory canopy by designer Tanya Aquiñiga is the High’s eighth site-specific installation on the Woodruff Arts Center’s Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza, continuing the Museum’s multiyear series of inclusive and inviting commissions to activate its outdoor space and encourage community engagement. Drawing upon years of Aquiñiga’s collaborative practice, the project explores craft and its multiple connections to culture, tradition, materials, function, and community.

The installation’s massive canopy will comprise many layers, including custom papel picado (traditional crafts of cut tissue paper with global roots) designed by various people at workshops in Atlanta. In addition to the papel picado, decorations from celebratory traditions around the world, such as kites, lanterns, floral garland, and disco balls, will envelop the interior of the environment and create a spectacular panoply of layered signs and symbols. Aguiñiga will also create objects for the space that probe ideas surrounding cultural intersections and hybrid identities and will feature custom-designed piñatas, based on designs by several contest winners from the Atlanta region, in the installation.