The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, has announced that a new public art installation from artist Ja’Hari Ortega, Big Hoops to Fill, is on view to the public beginning May 1, 2025 at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Seaport Boulevard.
The artwork features two outsized golden bamboo hoop earrings–also known as “door-knocker” earrings– that function as interactive swings. Cast from fiberglass and resin composite, the earrings hang from a swing set that echoes one the artist grew up playing on in Roxbury.
Ortega’s sculpture emphasizes the cultural weight of bamboo hoop earrings, an iconic style of jewelry worn by many women of color that originated within early hip-hop culture and fashion. From gracing the ears of performers such as Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, Roxanne Shanté, Mary J. Blige, and Queen Latifah, to being immortalized in the song, Around the Way Girl, by LL Cool J, bamboo hoop earrings are a cultural signifier and symbol of resistance, identity, and pride for generations of BIPOC communities.
Ortega shares: “Jewelry to me is like photography; it captures a moment in time and special pieces are often passed down from generation to generation. These hoops are an unapologetic statement of self-expression, pride, and connection to one’s roots and identity.”
By rendering bamboo hoop earrings at a monumental scale in downtown Boston, Ortega centers the everyday lives of women of color in public space and creates a legible invitation to the artwork as a space of play, rest, leisure, and relaxation. As the artist states, Big Hoops to Fill creates opportunities to “heal one’s inner child, strengthen healthy multigenerational relationships, and foster confidence in one’s identity and culture.”
Audrey Lopez, The Greenway Conservancy’s Director and Curator of Public Art, says: “Big Hoops to Fill is a beacon of play, rest, and joy, and an affirmation of the everyday lives of women of color. Ortega’s artwork inspires us to think broadly and critically about which objects and whose histories and cultural references form the basis of monuments in Boston’s public spaces.”