‘Curious and circumspect creatures’: the artist making sculptures for the rats of New York City

For his latest project, Asad Raza made ‘public art’ for rats with pieces designed to appeal to the city’s maligned rodents “We call this the Hell Door,” artist Asad Raza explained animatedly.

It’s 10pm on a warm August evening, and we are standing outside a small enclosure at the back of a seafood restaurant under the Manhattan Bridge that to any other passersby would have been invisible.

“Are you ready?” he asks and, with my OK, pulls the door open to reveal what looks like 100 rats cascading over the dumpsters stored in this small, dimly lit room and scampering away into their secret passages in the walls and floor.

This foul-smelling, grime-encrusted site is just one of more than 20 that Raza, and his team of three installers – fellow artists Devyn Gallindo, Kunning Huang and Jared Packard – have identified across New York City as prime locations for, as he calls it, “public art for rats”.

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