Xenobia Bailey’s 2023 public installation Steal Away extended approximately 500 feet around the construction site of the National Black Theatre’s future home in Harlem.
Presented through a partnership involving the theatre and ArtBridge, the work transformed temporary fencing into a continuous field of colour and pattern.
Quilting traditions translated into public geometry
Bailey is known for crochet, textiles and large geometric compositions connected with African American domestic design.
Steal Away drew on the visual intelligence of quilts, household objects and community-made environments.
Patterns repeated, expanded and changed across the long barrier, allowing pedestrians to encounter the installation gradually while moving along the street.
The title referred to the African American spiritual “Steal Away,” connecting the work with histories of survival, coded communication and collective movement.
A temporary installation marking a permanent cultural future
The fencing surrounded a 21-storey development designed by Frida Escobedo Architects and Handel Architects.
The completed project was planned to include several floors for the National Black Theatre.
Founded in 1968 by Dr Barbara Ann Teer, the institution had become one of the longest-running Black theatres in the United States.
Bailey’s work did not merely decorate the construction period.
It made the theatre’s cultural presence visible before the new building was complete and connected future architecture with artistic traditions developed in Black homes and communities.
Steal Away showed how a public artwork can hold a place during transition.
The installation was temporary, but its scale announced continuity, turning a construction boundary into a statement about cultural memory and the institution being built behind it.