Ewetopia — Where We Land · Dashboard
Page 01 · The Landing
Site-specific public art · Lower Manhattan · 2025

EWETOPIA

A giant crayon-skinned paper plane, folded by a whole city and hung over a pond — an imagined commons where every dream finds a flock to land in.

↪ formerly “Where We Land” ✈ 1 enormous plane 🐑 0 words required with Korea Art Forum (KAF)
842
Co-creators
the flock
2,891
Drawings on the skin
a living archive
24 ft
Wingspan
bigger than the taxi
18
Workshop days
spring ’25
31
Mother tongues
none of them written

The big idea (try not to tear up)

The paper plane is the most universal thing we own: childhood, a quick flick of the wrist, the act of sending something out and hoping it lands somewhere kind. Ewetopia takes that throwaway gesture and blows it up to the size of a migration.

Hung over the reflecting pool at Collect Pond Park, the sculpture is a bridge between the hard ground of the city and the fluid, shifting business of being a person far from home. “Landing” is the moment one journey ends and a brand-new story is allowed to begin.

← this is the part where the diaspora kids drew their grandmothers’ goats with wings.

Collect Pond reflection 24 ft wingspan
actual skin swatches →

Vital stats

  • FormOne enormous suspended paper plane
  • SkinPatchwork of community paintings & drawings
  • MaterialsWeather-proof paper-composite, ink, paint, steel frame
  • SiteReflecting pool, Collect Pond Park, NYC
  • PartnerKorea Art Forum (KAF)
  • StatusSuspended over water, nose pointed somewhere hopeful
Collect Pond Park
1
Mode of expression

Visual dialogue

Sketches, colors and abstract marks carry the feelings that slip through any translation. You draw it; we get it.

2
Mode of expression

Tactile making

Kids to elders drew straight onto the plane’s skin. Every hand left a mark — the sculpture became a living archive of touch.

3
Mode of expression

Where you from?

Two questions — “What is that?” and “Where are you from?” — turned creatures, homes and family into the project’s real vocabulary.

Page 02 · The Flock
The data of a shared imagination

WHAT 842 PEOPLE DREW

Numbers are real-ish: tallied from workshop logs, then rounded with affection.

What the flock drew

Creatures & beasts
34%
Family & faces
22%
Home & landscapes
18%
Flying machines
12%
Pure scribble
9%
Snacks 🥟
5%

Where we’re from

  • United States210
  • Iran138
  • Korea121
  • Mexico96
  • China74
  • Dominican Rep.63
  • + 140 neighbors from 26 other homelands · everyone got a wing.

Workshop flight log · spring 2025

MAR 08
First fold — KAF kickoff
MAR 22
Elders’ afternoon
APR 05
Kids take over
?
APR 19
“Where are you from?” day
MAY 03
Skin assembled
MAY 18
Launch over the pond

Feelings on the skin

  • Joy 31%
  • Longing / nostalgia 26%
  • Hope 19%
  • Wonder 14%
  • Homesickness 10%

Where they land

97%of the planes point somewhere that isn’t here — yet.
1 : 842one pond, 842 trajectories, all aimed home.
0crash landings. (We checked. Twice.)
I drew my grandma’s goat. It can fly now.
— Juan Diego, age 7
Home is the smell, not the map. So I drew the smell.
— Maryam, co-creator
Mine is the purple one with the rocket. Please don’t lose it.
— anonymous, age 5
Ewetopia ✈
A project by Ali Motamedi, in collaboration with the Korea Art Forum (KAF).
Suspended over the reflecting pool at Collect Pond Park, Lower Manhattan, NYC · 2025.
Part of the Where We Land / Ewetopia participatory series · expression over writing.
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