You Were Here – Video Art Installation by Nitin Mukul

“You Were Here,” a new video art installation and Nitin Mukul‘s latest solo project, is on view through Dec. 31 at Los Herederos Radio station located in the 74th St.– Roosevelt Ave. subway station in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Join the opening reception hosted by Epicenter NYC and Los Herederos Radio together with neighbors to celebrate “You Were Here.”

We hope to see you!

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WHEN: Opening reception on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, from 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.

WHERE: The Los Herederos Radio (LHR) space is located next to the Queens bound E/F/M subway platform stairs in the station. This entry closest to LHR is at the corner of Broadway and 74th Street next to Pronto Convenience Store (see map here).

Standard subway fare may be required to enter the station. If complimentary access is needed, Epicenter will help accommodate.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

This project was made possible by Mukul being awarded a 2025 NYFA Queens Art Fund New Works Grant. It is also part of Fall of Freedom, a nationwide wave of creative resistance.

About the works

“You Were Here” is a video art installation featured in the 74th St.–Roosevelt Ave. station in Jackson Heights, Queens, one of the busiest subway stations in NYC –– in one of the most culturally diverse zip codes in the world –– with an average of over 100,000 people passing through daily. The title speaks to at-risk elements of our surroundings and society that have already or are gradually disappearing from view. Mukul was reflecting on First Peoples, as well as recent incidents of disappeared and abducted members of our local community in the anti-immigration raids, and lost ones from the pandemic that this neighborhood was at the center of. In addition to the painted elements that have been the core of Mukul’s durational painting technique, all footage was filmed in Jackson Heights. It opens with subway riders disappearing from view as they descend the stairs underground and later bumblebees pollinating by vibrating their bodies to shake pollen loose from flowers. These bees face extinction due to habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. An aerial image of Jackson Heights shared with the artist weeks ago by an astronaut currently on board the International Space Station also appears as a metaphor for our place in the universe and how all our actions have an impact.

Artist and Epicenter NYC co-founder Nitin Mukul makes immersive slow art experiences that encourages participants to momentarily disconnect from the spectacles of social media and the like, in order to sync with the meditative pace of durational painting. The process of creating a durational painting necessitates an engagement with the atmospheric conditions at the site of its production. These ambient improvisational paintings begin by layering paint in sheets of ice, freezing each layer so it accumulates layers of color and texture. The frozen form is placed outside on an easel and allowed to to melt according to natural weather conditions while it is filmed. Experiencing the resulting piece can be therapeutic, giving us a glimpse of elapsing geologic time. Viewers have space to build empathy with the forces at play in these pieces, and foster an almost animistic connection to them. We can identify with the material bodily quality of the metamorphing painting, its viscous glistening surface juxtaposed with and acted upon by the landscape and atmospheric conditions reveals that there is less separation between our human containers and the seemingly non sentient matter around us than we might think. This is slow, ambient art that also functions as an empirical reflection of the site on which it is made: light, temperatures, time of day, location, and our climate at large. It can be seen as a new context for understanding abstract painting as a durational experience that is site specific, yet borderless.