We talked to the artist Curtis @talwst Santiago about the new facade installation of his work on active scaffolding in Manhattan In the artist’s words: A four-minute walk from you’re standing, my life changed. At the New York Studio School on West 8th Street, I walked into my first drawing class with Graham Nickson and never looked back. That room is why I moved to this city. This city is why I became who I am. Football is the world’s game — and the world is always playing for something. From playing as a kid in Alberta to watching my own child fall in love with the game in Europe, the ball keeps rolling. No sport crosses borders, languages, and politics more freely, or reveals them more honestly. Philip Guston understood that a shoe could carry everything. His boot paintings cracked open the idea that the most ordinary object — worn, scuffed, just sitting there — could hold humour, dread, tenderness, politics. All of it at once. I’ve never stopped thinking about that. I don’t live in New York anymore. But some part of me never left these streets. My deepest thanks to Facade Foundation for their commitment to bringing art out of the gallery and into the life of the city — boldly, generously, and at a scale that stops you in your tracks. —Curtis Talwst Santiago, April 2026 “No Player Shall Gain An Advantage” (2025) Located on the corner of East 9th street and University Place On view through July 2026, this exhibition is made possible with the support of the FIFA 26 NYNJ Host Committee @fwc26nynj in connection with the upcoming 2026 World Cup games, Andamio Scaffolding, @designbuildmade and @nyculture . And thank you to @valentinwedde on the photograph of Curtis’ original work!

Facade Foundation (@facadefoundation ) is turning New York City’s scaffolding into space for large-scale public art, and their newest project might be their biggest yet. In collaboration with the artist Curtis Talwst Santiago (@talwst ), supported by the FIFA 26 NYNJ Host Committee, Curtis’ 2025 painting “No Player Shall Gain An Advantage” has been scaled to 30x24 feet, installed on active scaffold netting just off East 9th Street and University Place in Manhattan. Shirt (@shirtnyc ), Artistic Director at Facade Foundation, explains how the work’s title pulls directly from FIFA’s Law 11, the offside rule, with Santiago using soccer’s formal logic to explore legitimacy, positionality, and power. The site also carries personal weight for the artist: the New York Studio School, where he took his first drawing class and never looked back, is just a four-minute walk away. “No Player Shall Gain An Advantage” will be on view through July 2026. Past facade installations include works by Shirt and June Canedo de Souza. Anthony Akinbola’s “Rapunzel” is on view through May 2026 at the corner of Willoughby and Washington Ave in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

From our region to the world 🌎🗽🎨 We’re proud to share that a new World Cup art installation is now up at East 9th Street and University Place, featuring NYC native Curtis @talwst Santiago. In collaboration with @facadefoundation . Open 24/7, go check it out!! #WeAreNYNJ #Somos26 #WeAre26

“A four-minute walk from where you’re standing, my life changed. At the New York Studio School on West 8th Street, I walked into my first drawing class with Graham Nickson and never looked back. That room is why I moved to this city. The city never left me—I carry it still.” Curtis @talwst Santiago’s work “No Player Shall Gain An Advantage” (2025), originally made in flashé, acrylic paint, aerosol, and charcoal, has been scaled to 30 x 24 feet and transposed to scaffold netting, installed on active scaffolding on a building just off the corner of E 9th street and University Place in Manhattan. On view through July 2026, our main supporter for the project is the FIFA 26 NYNJ Host Committee @fwc26nynj , timed to the lead-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the project is part of the Committee’s ongoing efforts to engage the region and incoming visitors. Part of an ongoing body of work by Santiago in which soccer enters as a visual and conceptual framework, the title “No Player Shall Gain An Advantage” references FIFA’s Laws of the Game, specifically from Law 11, the offside rule, which penalizes a player if they “become actively involved in play.” The law is designed to prevent a player from “gaining an advantage by being in that position.” Across paintings, sculpture, and dioramas, the artist has been working to translate the movement and ritual of sport into a broader exploration, using soccer and its rules, as a way of thinking through legitimacy, positionality, and power. All inquiries regarding the original 20 × 23 1/2 inch painting may be directed to the NY-based gallery @uffnerliu . Come visit the site 24/7 in any weather (it hits differently at different times of the day)––post some photos and tag @facadefoundation , @talwst and @fwc26nynj to be reposted over the next few months! Big thank you to our partners Andamio Scaffolding, @designbuildmade and @nyculture 🫡 Facade Foundation works with artists, scaffold companies and building owners, to turn active construction sites into a citywide platform for ambitious contemporary art—making works accessible, impactful, and woven into the fabric of everyday life.

New facade up! On view starting today: Curtis @talwst Santiago’s work is installed on active scaffolding downtown Manhattan at East 9th Street and University Place. Facade Foundation is proud to present the multidisciplinary artist’s painting “No Player Shall Gain An Advantage” (2025), scaled 30 x 24 feet and printed onto active scaffold netting. The title of this work comes directly from FIFA’s Laws of the Game, specifically from Law 11, the offside rule, which is designed to penalize a player if they “become actively involved in play.” The law is designed to prevent a player from “gaining an advantage by being in that position.” Across paintings, sculpture, and dioramas, the artist has been working with various materials to translate the movement and ritual of sport into a broader exploration, using soccer and its rules, as a way of thinking through legitimacy, positionality, and power. Santiago previously made artworks involving scaffolding, building out sheds in the gallery, making paintings with the standard green color, and showing drawings attached to scaffold netting in his solo exhibition “Can’t I Alter” at @drawingcenter in 2020. Come see us! Couple blocks from Washington Square Park❤️❤️ Curtis @talwst Santiago No Player Shall Gain An Advantage (2025) Corner of East 9th Street and University Place Manhattan 10003 On view through July 2026, this exhibition is made possible with the support of the FIFA 26 NYNJ Host Committee @fwc26nynj in connection with the upcoming 2026 World Cup games, Andamio Scaffolding, @designbuildmade and @nyculture 🫡🫂 As always very special shout out and thank you to every single person behind the scenes on these small but mighty teams coming together!

Coming to a corner near you…

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“Architecture obviously plays a huge role, she’s fascinated by it—she thinks New York City is an exhibition.” - Daniel Buchholz In 2007, the artist Isa Genzken represented Germany in the Venice Biennale, covering the outside of the pavilion with orange scaffold netting. She called the work “Oil.” Inside the building—redesigned by a Nazi architect in 1938 (Isa: “I destroyed that a little bit”)—the artist hung American astronauts from the ceiling, suitcases dripping with paint and cat posters everywhere, and stuffed animals attached to nooses. The walls were lined with full length mirrors and the floors were covered with fabric. One writer called it “junk-yard baroque decadence…full of surprising coherence.” Eight years later, in 2015 Isa made models in 1:50-1:100 scale—of both her realized and unrealized public sculptures—as part of her contribution to Okwui Enwezor’s Venice Biennale exhibition. They include a model of her proposed receiver antennas on Philip Johnson’s AT&T building; a massive metal ring made but never installed in Rotterdam (because of the potentiality of a noise complaint); and “Ohr”, a photograph of a woman’s ear that was installed on the facade of City Hall in Innsbruck, Austria in 2002. Isa started coming to New York since she was 16, staying with her twin aunts who were stewardesses, in an apartment on Lexington Ave. It was from those early visits the artist claims she thought, “this is my city.” In 1987 she said “public sculpture operates between the two poles of a new housing development and a traditional monument.” New music in 2nd slide made for Isa’s ‘Ground Zero’ video by @bobbybeethoven Isa’s shows VACATION @davidzwirner closes today! ISA USA @galerie_buchholz is open til 4/25 “I love public sculpture. If they give you space to do something in public, you can go there, you can visit this place. Then you make a photo of that place. Then sit in your studio and think, What is missing there? And then you have an idea of what is missing, for the public. And you want to make it, not perfectly, alright, but you want to do something people love. Because something is missing there. What is missing? You do it.”

Congresswoman Nydia Velásquez recently stopped by Anthony’s facade! @rep_velazquez @heyitsbunmi Thank you, Nydia! We appreciate your work repping Brooklyn and Queens🫡 Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola’s “Rapunzel” (2025) is installed on active scaffolding at the corner of Willoughby and Washington Ave in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. On view through May 2026

We filmed a conversation between the artist Anthony Akinbola and curator Jayson Overby, on the block of Anthony’s facade in Brooklyn Watch the full conversation on our new youtube channel / @ facadefoundation Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola’s “Rapunzel” (2025) is installed on active scaffolding at the corner of Willoughby and Washington Ave in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. On view extended through May 2026 🫡 @heyitsbunmi @jjjjjjase Super-8 footage courtesy of: @gloriazingales Thank you Anthony, Jayson, Spence, Seb, Kev, Shirt, Cy, Glo and many others for helping make this possible

We filmed a conversation between artist Anthony Akinbola and the curator Jayson Overby, on the block of Anthony’s facade in Brooklyn Watch the full conversation on our new youtube channel / @ facadefoundation Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola’s “Rapunzel” (2025) is installed on active scaffolding at the corner of Willoughby and Washington Ave in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. On view extended through April 2026 🫡 @heyitsbunmi @jjjjjjase Thank you Anthony, Jayson, Spence, Seb, Kev, Shirt, Cy, Glo and many others for helping make this possible

How do you turn a construction site 🚧 into a cultural destination🏛️? The @FacadeFoundation has cracked this unlikely code with the help of our #CityCanvas program, reimagining New York’s ubiquitous construction sheds and scaffolds into platforms for ambitious public art. Facade Foundation’s latest installation, “Rapunzel” (2025), is the first public presentation of work by Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola (@heyitsbunmi ). Located on the corner of Willoughby and Washington Ave in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, the work translates Akinbola’s textile-based painting infused with durags into large-scale public form. Born to immigrant parents and raised between Nigeria and the United States, Akinbola frequently works with materials resonant with Black American life, like palm oil, hair brushes, and durags, meditating on their messages on identity, history, and belonging. “Rapunzel” is on view through April 2026. Swipe through the photos of this post to view “Rapunzel” along with a few of Facade Foundation’s past installations. Facade Foundation’s work is made possible, in part, by City Canvas, an initiative of @NYCulture and @NYC_DOB that allows for the installation of temporary visual art on temporary protective structures, improving our city’s streetscape for residents and visitors across the five boroughs. Visit the links in @NYCulture ’s bio to learn more about Facade Foundation and City Canvas. #NYCulture #NYC 📷: Photos courtesy of Facade Foundation. 1-2. Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, “Rapunzel,” 2025. Durags on panel, 40 x 20 feet. 3. SHIRT, “Whole worlds you never see a block over from where you normally walk,” 2025. Photograph, 21 x 21 feet. 4. June Canedo de Souza, “Yellow foot, thorn, fence,” 2025. Oil and acrylic paint, charcoal, oil pastels on canvas, 22 x 23 feet.