Baseera Khan Second Skin 2022 Plywood, silk Kashmiri rugs, scrim fabric, hardware; Farrow & Ball wall paint Permanent installation commissioned for Meta's NYC Farley Building Role: Curator & Producer, Meta Open Arts. Born to Muslim Indian emigrés in Texas, Brooklyn-based artist Baseera Khan creates work that investigates systems of power. Their installation for Meta consists of a monumental sculpture and a large-scale mural. The sculpture references the Corinthian column, an architectural symbol of imperialist power that originated in the Roman empire and today found on the facades of government buildings, banks, churches, and museums largely across the Western world. The Farley Post Office building features one of the largest colonnades of this style in the world. Composed of a hollowed-out column form, the sculpture is wrapped in handmade silk rugs created by men and women in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority disputed territory between India and Pakistan that once fell under the rule of British colonizers. ''Wrapping power with power,'' the artist says of the piece. The accompanying mural expands the rug patterns to a much larger scale. Using paints by Farrow & Ball, a British heritage paint manufacturer, Khan reminds the viewer of the legacies of colonial dominance—and the power of traditional craft to reconnect us all to what has been lost.