This Valentine’s Day, New York is showing love for its immigrant communities with an installation at Times Square, We Were Strangers Once Too, a reference to president Barack Obama’s November 2014 speech on immigration reform. The work—by the Office for Creative Research, a group that comes up with innovative ways to show and use data—is made of 33 metal poles coloured in red and pink blocks that reference the shifting populations of the city’s foreign-born residents, based on nationality. The colours on the poles align to form heart shape as you walk around the sculpture, depending on your point of view. “Now more than ever New Yorkers need to stand up and say we are proud to live in a city of immigrants,” the Office for Creative Research said in a press statement. The sculpture, which is the 2017 winner of the annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition, will be on view through March.
