Ai Weiwei is known for pushing boundaries. The artist and activist—who has a long history of dissent, particularly with regard to China’s communist regime—famously had his passport revoked by Chinese authorities in 2011, ostensibly for tax evasion. Since gaining back his right to travel abroad in 2015, Ai has made a triumphant return to New York City—where he lived and practiced in the 1980s—with numerous gallery shows, an interactive exhibit designed with Herzog & de Meuron, and, now, a citywide display of installations titled Good Fences Make Good Neighbors. With this new work, Ai explores boundaries rather than tests them, riffing off the security fence to call attention to the international migration crisis and examine the notion of belonging.

Sponsored by the Public Art Fund, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors comprises 18 site-specific works across Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. Although the installations take on varying sizes and shapes, and incorporate different materials, each alludes to a type of physical barrier. For instance, the display surrounding the Unisphere in Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park is a low perimeter, bench-like structure composed of mesh netting strung around metal stanchion barriers. In Washington Square Park, Ai placed a polished mirror passageway encased in a nearly 40-foot-tall metal cage under the Stanford White-designed triumphal arch; at the southeast entrance to Central Park, he put a large golden cage that passersby can enter. Artworks also include metal trellises fastened to the rear end of bus shelters in Downtown Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx.