Times Square Arts Presents Three New Public Artworks by Maia Chao Across Times Square This August

(NEW YORK, NY — July 23, 2026) — Times Square Arts is pleased to announce a series of public artworks by Maia Chao taking place this August, marking the culmination of her three years as Times Square Arts’ Public Artist-in-Residence. Three interconnected yet distinct projects—including a restaging of the iconic live performance American Idle, an accompanying Midnight Moment presentation inspired by the performance, and an in situ photography installation—emerge from Chao’s sustained investigation into the often unseen labor and infrastructures that shape public life, drawn from three years of research into and engagement with the operational infrastructure of Times Square.

Throughout the duration of her residency, Chao was embedded in the functional structures of Times Square, shadowing sanitation workers, public safety officers, and the daily systems that sustain one of the world’s busiest public spaces. Across performance, moving image, and photography, Chao reveals the hidden choreography of the district and examines how public behavior is observed, documented, regulated, and repeated. Allowing the project to unfold through observation, conversation, and participation, Chao unraveled connections between maintenance labor, crowd behavior, surveillance, and the performance of everyday life.

On view from August 1–31, Case Subtype: Damaged/Nonfunctional presents thirty photographs originally taken by Times Square Alliance sanitation workers and public safety officers as part of their daily maintenance and safety reports. Installed across Bigbelly trash compactors throughout the plazas, the photographs document “cases” in public space requiring cleaning, repair, or removal. Reframed by Chao as a public, found archive, these administrative photographs transform routine maintenance documentation into an unexpected record of the fleeting disruptions, discarded objects, and everyday traces that are typically erased from view. Occupying surfaces ordinarily reserved for advertising, the installation foregrounds the labor and systems of observation that make Times Square’s carefully maintained appearance possible.

On August 14 at 7pm and 9pm, Times Square Arts is pleased to restage American Idle by Maia Chao, in partnership with WORTHLESSSTUDIOS. American Idle is an hour-long live performance in Duffy Square first performed in 2025, conceived and directed by Chao and choreographed by Lena Engelstein. Drawing from close observations of pedestrian movement alongside the looping gestures of crowd-simulation software used to predict and regulate human behavior in public space, the performers inhabit familiar archetypes—the lost tourist, the tired parent, the kissing couple—while pairs of identically dressed doubles repeat, mirror, and glitch one another’s actions. Blurring the boundaries between spectator and participant, choreography and everyday life, the performance examines how Times Square’s hypervisibility encourages conformity and continual performance for an ever-present audience of cameras and screens.

Extending these ideas into the city’s largest public exhibition platform, Midnight Moment, Studies for American Idle transforms material created for the performance into a video presentation on nearly 100 digital billboards, screened nightly from 11:57pm to midnight throughout the month. Filmed specifically for Times Square’s monumental billboards, the work isolates gestures from the live performance within the controlled space of a black box theater before returning them to the spectacle that inspired them. As movements observed in the plaza reappear across Times Square’s illuminated screens, the work creates a recursive feedback loop between public life and its mediated image, exploring how imitation, repetition, and visibility increasingly shape contemporary experience.

“I became interested not only in Times Square as an image, but in the performances and infrastructural systems that allow it to be made and maintained as a powerful and coherent symbol,” said Maia Chao. “The more time I spent there, the more I found myself learning about the processes through which certain things become visible while others disappear. I didn’t begin with an idea for a performance, a video, or a photography project. I followed the research wherever it led, and the forms emerged from the systems themselves.”

“The Public Artist-in-Residence program is built around the idea that meaningful public art begins with sustained engagement, and Maia embraced that invitation with extraordinary dedication,” said Anna Starling, Director of Times Square Arts and Vice President, Development & Partnerships at Times Square Alliance. “Over three years, she immersed herself in the people, routines, and systems that keep Times Square running every day. The resulting works reveal dimensions of this place that even those who know it well rarely have the opportunity to see, inviting audiences to look beyond the spectacle and consider the intricate choreography of labor, care, and human behavior that unfolds here every day.”

ABOUT MAIA CHAO
Maia Chao is an artist making anthropological work across performance, video, sculpture, and public practice. She has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Times Square Arts, The Shed, and MoMA Education. Additional projects have been presented at the RISD Museum, Bronx Museum, Mural Arts Philadelphia, Boston Center for the Arts, Smack Mellon, and Oregon Contemporary. She has completed fellowships and residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center, Pioneer Works, and Queer|Art, among others. Named a Pew Fellow in 2022, she attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2023. For the 2026 Whitney Biennial, Chao presented BEING MOVED, a new performance commission. She is currently a 2026 United States Artists Fellow. She is full-time faculty in Interdisciplinary Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore and resides in Philadelphia.

ABOUT WORTHLESSSTUDIOS
WORTHLESSSTUDIOS is a New York based not-for-profit art organization that provides essential resources to epoch-making artists producing ambitious artwork. Through public art projects, exhibitions and residency programs, WORTHLESSSTUDIOS executes its mission at a grand scale while still building a strong, intimate and supportive community for artists, art organizations, fabricators and art patrons who all share a passion for public art and in bringing big dreams to life.

ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a cultural district and place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the arts program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity.

PRESS INQUIRIES
timessquarearts@culturalcounsel.com

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