Artist Sherwin Banfield's nine-foot sculpture brings the King of New York to DUMBO
In 2023, artist Sherwin Banfield unveiled a large-scale mixed-media sculpture of The Notorious B.I.G. at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in DUMBO — a location chosen for its symbolic resonance as a gateway between Manhattan and Brooklyn, between aspiration and origin.
The sculpture, approximately nine feet tall, depicts Christopher Wallace in a posture of relaxed authority — seated, arms open, the gold crown that has become his cultural sigil rendered in hammered metal above his head. Embedded speakers within the sculpture's base played a rotating selection of Biggie's music, creating an audio-visual monument that drew passersby to stop and engage for hours at a time.
"When people walked by and heard that music coming from the sculpture, they stopped. Every single one of them stopped." — Sherwin Banfield
Banfield, a Brooklyn-based artist known for large-scale public works celebrating figures from Black American cultural history, spent eighteen months developing the piece in collaboration with the Christopher Wallace Estate. The Estate granted access to archival photographs and personal effects, some of which were incorporated into the sculpture's surface as embedded relief details.
"I wanted the sculpture to feel inhabited," Banfield said at the unveiling. "Not like a monument to someone who is gone, but like he's still here. Still on the corner. Still watching Brooklyn."
The location in DUMBO — within sight of the bridge that Biggie crossed countless times traveling between Brooklyn and the world — was deliberate. The bridge appears in photographs from his career, appears in the Brooklyn geography that structures his lyrics, and appears as a recurring symbol in the mythology of the borough he embodied. Placing the sculpture at its foot was a declaration: this is where he came from, and this is where he belongs.
The installation drew significant attention from both the local community and from visitors to DUMBO's established arts district. On the weekend of the unveiling, the Brooklyn Paper reported lines stretching half a block as people waited to photograph themselves with the sculpture. Many brought flowers. Several people who grew up with Christopher Wallace in Bed-Stuy attended and described the experience as genuinely moving.
The installation was planned as a temporary exhibit, but response from the community and from the Wallace Estate prompted discussions about finding a permanent location in Brooklyn for a major public sculpture. As of 2024, those discussions are ongoing. The DUMBO piece, in the meantime, remains one of the most compelling public art installations Brooklyn has seen in years — a monument to a man who never stopped being the neighborhood's own.
Original Publication
Read Original Article at Brooklyn Paper
