Lucia Hierro: Moving Day
Upcoming exhibition
Press Release
MARC STRAUS is pleased to present Moving Day, a solo exhibition of new wall and floor sculptures by Lucia Hierro. Through a series of sculptural boxes, containers, and enclosures, Hierro examines displacement, memory, and the fragile stability of home within the shifting economic realities of contemporary New York.
The exhibition takes its title from a historical New York tradition dating back to the colonial era. For more than two centuries, nearly all residential leases in the city expired simultaneously on May 1st at 9 a.m., forcing thousands of residents to relocate at once. Streets filled with carts, wagons, and furniture as families hurriedly transported their belongings across the city in a moment of collective upheaval. Known as “Moving Day,” the event transformed the city into a scene of chaos and renewal each year until the practice faded during World War II.
Hierro draws a parallel between this historical phenomenon and the present-day realities of New York’s cultural landscape. Rising rents, shifting economic pressures, and the steady disappearance of small businesses and artist spaces have made long-term stability increasingly difficult to sustain. Neighborhoods shaped by artists and cultural workers are often transformed by the very investment their presence attracts, creating cycles of displacement that continue to reshape the city. For Hierro, these forces are not abstract. Following the tragic loss of her parents over the course of the past year and a half, works in the exhibition pay homage to both her late mother and father, and pose a deep inquiry into what happens to a person when faced with circumstances of this nature. A situation that universally each of us will at one point have to reckon with.
Throughout the exhibition, packing becomes both literal and metaphorical. The works suggest a process of closing one chapter while preparing another: boxing up the objects, images, and identities that once defined a place or moment. In doing so, Hierro captures a deeply personal yet widely shared experience—the uncertainty of living and working within a city undergoing constant economic and cultural transformation.
The works in Moving Day reflect this moment of upheaval. Drawing from the formal language that has defined Hierro’s practice for the past decade—referencing Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art—the sculptures incorporate visual echoes of artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Donald Judd, and Tom Wesselmann. Yet while these historical references shape the work’s form, its content remains grounded in the artist’s lived experience.
Hierro’s sculptural works function simultaneously as containers and images: repositories for the fragments that make up a life in motion. Packed within them are the visual remnants that have long appeared throughout her work—diasporic tchotchkes, personal ephemera, and the recognizable symbols of New York’s urban vernacular. In one work, Cliché Paradox, a black trash bag contains Timberland boots and a Yankees fitted cap, objects that have become shorthand for a particular cultural identity while simultaneously revealing the complex layers beneath such stereotypes.
Moving Day ultimately reflects a moment of transition, not only for the artist but for New York itself. Artists have historically been among the first to imagine the potential of neighborhoods before investment follows. Yet as rising costs continue to reshape the city, the communities that once gave these places their character are increasingly forced to move elsewhere. Through these works, Hierro documents that fragile threshold between departure and possibility. Even amid precarity and displacement, the act of moving suggests the potential for renewal. What appears as an ending may also be the beginning of something still unfolding.
The exhibition takes its title from a historical New York tradition dating back to the colonial era. For more than two centuries, nearly all residential leases in the city expired simultaneously on May 1st at 9 a.m., forcing thousands of residents to relocate at once. Streets filled with carts, wagons, and furniture as families hurriedly transported their belongings across the city in a moment of collective upheaval. Known as “Moving Day,” the event transformed the city into a scene of chaos and renewal each year until the practice faded during World War II.
Hierro draws a parallel between this historical phenomenon and the present-day realities of New York’s cultural landscape. Rising rents, shifting economic pressures, and the steady disappearance of small businesses and artist spaces have made long-term stability increasingly difficult to sustain. Neighborhoods shaped by artists and cultural workers are often transformed by the very investment their presence attracts, creating cycles of displacement that continue to reshape the city. For Hierro, these forces are not abstract. Following the tragic loss of her parents over the course of the past year and a half, works in the exhibition pay homage to both her late mother and father, and pose a deep inquiry into what happens to a person when faced with circumstances of this nature. A situation that universally each of us will at one point have to reckon with.
Throughout the exhibition, packing becomes both literal and metaphorical. The works suggest a process of closing one chapter while preparing another: boxing up the objects, images, and identities that once defined a place or moment. In doing so, Hierro captures a deeply personal yet widely shared experience—the uncertainty of living and working within a city undergoing constant economic and cultural transformation.
The works in Moving Day reflect this moment of upheaval. Drawing from the formal language that has defined Hierro’s practice for the past decade—referencing Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art—the sculptures incorporate visual echoes of artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Donald Judd, and Tom Wesselmann. Yet while these historical references shape the work’s form, its content remains grounded in the artist’s lived experience.
Hierro’s sculptural works function simultaneously as containers and images: repositories for the fragments that make up a life in motion. Packed within them are the visual remnants that have long appeared throughout her work—diasporic tchotchkes, personal ephemera, and the recognizable symbols of New York’s urban vernacular. In one work, Cliché Paradox, a black trash bag contains Timberland boots and a Yankees fitted cap, objects that have become shorthand for a particular cultural identity while simultaneously revealing the complex layers beneath such stereotypes.
Moving Day ultimately reflects a moment of transition, not only for the artist but for New York itself. Artists have historically been among the first to imagine the potential of neighborhoods before investment follows. Yet as rising costs continue to reshape the city, the communities that once gave these places their character are increasingly forced to move elsewhere. Through these works, Hierro documents that fragile threshold between departure and possibility. Even amid precarity and displacement, the act of moving suggests the potential for renewal. What appears as an ending may also be the beginning of something still unfolding.
