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Times Square is already one of the more visually unhinged places on Earth, but next month, it’s somehow getting even weirder: picture a unicorn cow riding a jet ski through purple skies while giant milk jugs float overhead and rainbow portals open across more than 100 billboards.
For all of September, Times Square Arts’ nightly Midnight Moment will feature El Mundo es Niña, a surreal new work by Miami-based artist duo LIZN’BOW, a.k.a. Liz Ferrer and Bow Ty Enterprises Venture Capital. Every night from 11:57pm to midnight, the synchronized screens throughout Times Square will transform into Niñalandia, the pair’s fictional universe filled with fantastical characters, pop-culture references and some extremely strange modes of transportation.
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The three-minute video is part fever dream, part futuristic fantasy. Among the sights drifting through its candy-colored world: islands of money, floating milk jugs, a unicorn cow on a jet ski and Ferrer’s abuela cruising through the sky on a flying bicycle. LIZN’BOW describes Niñalandia as a “pro-pocalyptic” future, imagining how people might adapt and find joy and community amid climate change, rising waters and technological upheaval.
And because apparently the unicorn cow taking over Times Square’s screens wasn’t enough, one will also be showing up IRL. From September 20 through 27, Times Square will host a 27-foot-long inflatable unicorn cow riding a jet ski, alongside a monumental 34-foot-long inflatable rainbow. On September 23 at 10 pm, the spectacle gets even bigger with a live performance featuring LIZN’BOW’s feminist reggaeton band Niña and Puerto Rican art collective Poncili Creación.
LIZN’BOW have been collaborating since an unlikely meeting at a Chicago party in 2015, where Bow was working as (naturally) a human lamp. Their work mixes performance, installation, music, fashion and technology, with Niñalandia serving as an ever-expanding universe for much of it.
El Mundo es Niña kicks off Times Square Arts’ fall Midnight Moment season, which continues with animator Dustin Grella’s nostalgic ode to New York, Sunday Morning, in October and French-Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet’s exploration of Martinican carnival and mythology in November. Midnight Moment runs nightly across more than 100 electronic billboards between 41st and 49th Streets.
But first: September belongs to the jet-skiing unicorn cow.