At the corner of 7th Avenue and Carmine Street in Manhattan right now, there's a table for two split across a restaurant window. You can sit down on the inside or the outside, alone or with a companion, but either way you'll confront that inescapable fact of modern life—a screen.
"Table for Two" is an installation by Paris-born artist Shani Ha. Part sculpture, part performance art, it challenges those who sit down to look up from their smartphones and into the eyes of a friend, a stranger, or their own reflections in the glass. A self-conscious homage to Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, the work realizes the age-old concept of the big, crowded city as a lonely, isolating place.
