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Deets: This fall, a new mode of transportation is arriving in Times Square. Featuring an opulent carriage drawn by carousel-style horses and loaded with 90’s nostalgia, artist Yvette Mayorga’s Magic Grasshopper is a 30-foot-long kinetic sculpture carrying critical narratives of migration, feminized labor, and colonial histories. Designed to metaphorically transport viewers across borders and historical eras, the pink-hued fantastical vessel is also a tribute to the physical and personal journeys undertaken in pursuit of the American Dream.
The sculpture is elaborately piped in Mayorga’s signature faux-frosting: thickened acrylic applied through pastry bags, which references the artist's familial labor of baking and the broader histories of women’s work and immigrant labor. The disarmingly sweet exterior and the color pink become a subversion, a sugary shield, and a portal to a hopeful future.
The carriage itself looks prepared for a journey, with suitcases stacked on the roof, horses sporting Hello Kitty backpacks, and a smiley-face flag fluttering optimistically above. Tricked-out wheels with gold rims spin slowly beneath the carriage — an homage to the lowrider culture rooted in Mexican-American communities of Chicago, where the artist’s family lives. Wrapped around the carriage are painterly scenes of migration, layering European art historical tropes with personal and collective narratives.
Mayorga has coined the word “Latinxoco” to describe her distinctive style — taking inspiration from both Latinx and Rococo aesthetics, and the shared decadence of colonial Mexico and American culture. The carriage featured in Magic Grasshopper references the royal carriage of the Second Mexican Empire, which was modeled after the opulent coronation coach of Louis XVI at the Palace of Versailles, and was used at the Castillo de Chapultepec in Mexico City — a castle built atop sacred Aztec land. The title, Magic Grasshopper, refers to the English translation of the Nahuatl word Chapultepec (“hill of the grasshopper”), and evokes a mythical vehicle able to transcend the constraints of space and time.
Sited in Times Square, a crossroads of transportation, tourism, and visual symbol of the City that connotes big dreams and new beginnings, Magic Grasshopper mirrors the district’s spectacle, scale, and sense of possibility, while transporting us into deeper conversations about identity, immigration, and belonging.
As part of the project, Mayorga will partner with ART FOR CHANGE—a hybrid platform that connects socially conscious collectors with in-demand contemporary artists—to debut a limited edition work. A portion of net proceeds from the edition will benefit a nonprofit organization of the artist’s choice.
Magic Grasshopper will be on view free and open to the public 24/7 on Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets from October 15–December 2, 2025. Further programming details will be announced at a later date.
Fabrication services for Magic Grasshopper are by Stronghold Arts and The Factory NYC.
Hint for the Average Socialite: Learn more.
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