Artist Asad Raza has transformed an unusual corner of New York's public space into a site-specific art experiment centered on the city's brown rats. His latest project, "Thigmotaxis (the rat show)", will open September 19 at Times, a new downtown nonprofit arts venue.
Rather than staging the work for human spectators alone, Raza and his team placed small sculptures in parks, construction edges, housing-adjacent yards, and trash collection areas where rats naturally move. Developed with guidance from animal behaviorist Michael Parsons and support from MIT architects, the pieces were designed around how rats navigate urban environments, relying on smell, touch, and wall-hugging movement.
The sculptures look like fragments of concrete or rubble, but they include textured surfaces, scent-absorbing materials, and openings that invite exploration. Cameras recorded how the animals responded at night, turning the project into a study of behavior as much as a work of art.
Raza has long built projects that connect art with living systems. His earlier works included bringing trees into museum settings, rerouting river water through exhibition spaces, and creating fertile soil from waste materials. In this new chapter, he extends that practice to one of the city's most overlooked urban species.
The exhibition will present the sculptures alongside documentation from the field, while also including a wall-mounted piece for human visitors to touch. In Raza's view, the work asks a larger question: what does it mean to create an artwork that is intended for another species, yet remains open-ended and mysterious?
By reframing a familiar city animal as a subject of attention, the project suggests a future in which art, ecology, and urban life are more closely intertwined.
