A statue from Afghanistan in New York? Not quite, but the new public art in the famous High Line Park is indeed a reference to the Bamiyan Buddhas (6th century!), which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, despite international protests. The largest of them was over 50 meters tall, making it one of the largest standing Buddha images in the world.
The new “The Light That Shines Through the Universe” is a nearly 8-meter-tall sculpture by Vietnamese-American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, which aims to continue the conversation about the role of monuments: how cultural divides lead people to erect gigantic monuments to some ideas and tear down those of others.
It’s important to note that Nguyen didn’t create an exact replica, and his work is more of an echo or image, intended to evoke memory rather than a literal recreation of the original, although the statue is made of the same material as the original — carved sandstone.
Interestingly, the hands of the real Bamiyan Buddhas were lost long before the Taliban, so Nguyen decided not to “repaint” them in stone, but to create them differently. He cast two monumental hands from melted-down brass artillery shells and scrap metal collected in Afghanistan by one of his collaborators. In other words, the metal of war literally became a gesture of peace.
The hands are folded in mudras—ritual gestures symbolizing fearlessness and compassion. And most importantly, a gap, an empty space, is left between the shiny metal hands and the stone wrists. According to Alemany, this “space for reflection and imagination” — it allows the viewer to imagine what the lost hands were like.
📍High Line Plinth / 499 W 30th St, New York, NY 10001 (above the intersection of 10th Avenue and West 30th St)
The sculpture was unveiled in April 2026 and will remain on its pedestal for about a year and a half, until the fall of 2027.
