Cai Guo-Qiang. Fireflies, 2017. Photo: Jeff Fusco. Courtesy of Association for Public Art.

Public space has always been a contested realm; the questions of who is seen, heard, and permitted to take up space feel eternally relevant. These are, in short, questions of power, and which groups wield it. In 2017, however—with its political spectacles, airport sit-ins, massive protests, and monuments both toppled and fixed—American public space is uniquely fraught.

In a new public art initiative called Fireflies, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang seizes the potential energy of a year that not only marks unprecedented political unrest but also the centennial of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where Fireflies is staged through mid-October. On the September 14 opening celebration of the project, a fleet of pedicabs took to the main artery of the Parkway with a synchronized performance that lit up the darkened streets with Chinese lanterns of all shapes and sizes. The musical accompaniment to the performance was, somewhat confusingly, a rendition of the official Pennsylvania state song, an assertively nationalist tune. “This is my way of giving back the Parkway to the people,” Cai remarked via a translator, and the crowd cheered.

Cai Guo-Qiang at the opening of Fireflies, September 14, 2017. Photo: Jeff Fusco. Courtesy of Association for Public Art.

In Philadelphia, there is perhaps no better place than the Parkway to observe the apparent contradictions of space deemed public. At its northwestern head sit many of Philadelphia’s most storied and esteemed institutions: the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rodin Museum, the Barnes Foundation. Follow the Parkway southeast and it will spit you out at Love Park, home to both Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE sculpture and to one of the city’s most visible homeless populations. The massive gatherings of people on the Parkway have felt just as dissonant this year, from January’s fifty thousand-strong Women’s March to April’s NFL Draft to the Made in America music festival held over Labor Day weekend.

Among that roster of public gatherings, where does Fireflies fit in? At the opening celebration, it was difficult to tell. In remarks that preceded the performance, representatives from Philadelphia’s Association for Public Art underscored the importance of people coming together simply to come together, to be joyous and free.

Cai Guo-Qiang. Fireflies, 2017. Photo: Jeff Fusco. Courtesy of Association for Public Art.

As Cai’s pedicabs—the bright fireflies in question—whirled around the Parkway, the performance felt less like a salve or an answer to the insistent questions sparked by this particular slab of land in Philadelphia, and more like part of the rich palimpsest of the city’s streets. Indeed, I felt most joyous as I watched the wonderment of the babies and children in attendance, for whom this display really seemed to function.

The pedicab rides available to the public through mid-October have already sold out, limiting the participatory aspect of the project to a small segment of the population.¹ The rest of us are left to wonder, again, about the efficacy of aesthetically beautiful work in addressing what it means to be a citizen, and whether one of the artist’s signature gunpowder explosions might have been more fitting for the times in which we live. Fireflies was a lovely, sparkling flash of a moment in the long history of Philadelphia’s public spectacles, but as for “giving the Parkway back to the people,” its ownership will seemingly always be contested.

The opening of Cai Guo-Qiang’s Fireflies, Philadelphia, September 14, 2017. Photo: Jeff Fusco. Courtesy of Association for Public Art.

Cai Guo-Qiang. Fireflies, detail, 2017. Photo: Jeff Fusco. Courtesy of Association for Public Art.

Cai Guo-Qiang. Fireflies, 2017. Photo: Jeff Fusco. Courtesy of Association for Public Art.

Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies runs September 15 – October 8, 2017 on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Thursdays through Sundays from 6-10pm.

1. After the publication of this piece, the Association for Public Art reached out with the following clarifying information: “Although reservations are full, we are accepting walk-ups each night, and have been able to provide a ride to the majority of folks who come by for a walk-up ride.”