It’s a four-story outdoor art installation that’s hard to ignore. Residents of the Lower East Side awoke Christmas morning to find an enormous penis painted on the side of a Broome St. apartment building — courtesy of a Swedish-born artist.
“I have never heard so much laughter and seen so many happy faces behind my back when painting as for today doing this wall on Broome Street,” wrote Carolina Falkholt on Facebook after finishing the piece.
Falkholt, 40, is a well-known street artist renowned for her large-scale projects. A second Falkhalt painting on Pike St. on the Lower East Side features a far more abstract mural of a vagina. Her Instagram feed, featuring a photo of the painted phallus, has become home to a debate over its placement in a residential area.
Falkholt said the mural and another, which shows a more abstract depiction of a vagina on Pike Street, were “about not being ashamed of your body and who you are as a sexual being.”
“Talking about these subjects in public space is a must for a healthy, nonviolent community/world,” she said. “And the dialogue created around feminist public art pieces raises awareness.”
You just have to love New York…… and BIG penis’!