Joy Nagy: The Golden Door Project

Joy Nagy is building a wall…A wall of words, translated words into over twenty languages, from a portion of Emma Lazarus’ poem,
“The New Colossus, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door’

Transcribed onto fragile sheets of porcelain clay, these words echo our tenuous times. Nagy’s inspiration: thoughts of her grandmother’s immigration to America, wondering who might have translated Emma Lazarus’ poem to her as her passenger ship entered New York harbor. This is an ongoing project, the following languages have been transcribed onto porcelain pages.