Brooklyn Sculpture Says It All in a New York Way: ‘Oy’ and ‘Yo’
Image by Deborah Kass Instagram
A sculpture installed in a Brooklyn park says it all in an expressly New York way: “oy” and “yo.”
Artist Deborah Kass created the bright yellow sculpture, titled “OY/YO,” that was placed this week in Brooklyn Bridge Park, near the East River separating the two boroughs, according to reports. It is scheduled to remain there until August.
Those viewing from Brooklyn see “oy”; Manhattanites see “yo.”
“The fact that this particular work resonates so beautifully in so many languages to so many communities is why I wanted to make it monumental,” Kass told The New York Times. “This is New York, baby. We’ve got it all. And the sculpture covers it all.”
The work is made of aluminum and paint. Much of Kass’ work makes reference to other modern artists, including Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock.
What does the sculpture using the two oft-used expressions by New Yorkers mean? Kass told the Times that it was best left open to interpretation.
“Oy” entered the English lexicon in the 1890s, while “yo” has been used as far back as the 15th century in Middle English, Peter Sokolowski, the editor at large of Merriam-Webster, told the Times.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Fast Forward Brooklyn event with Itamar Ben-Gvir cancelled days before Israeli far-right minister’s US trip
-
Culture How Abraham Lincoln in a kippah wound up making a $250,000 deal on ‘Shark Tank’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.