Bamyan Buddha Reimagined in NY as Symbol of Peace, Cultural Memory
DID Press: An eight-meter-tall sculpture of the Bamyan Buddha, titled “Light Shining Upon the Cosmos,” will be installed in Manhattan, New York, in spring 2026. Created by Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, the work is intended as a symbol of peace, resilience, and remembrance of one of the world’s most devastating acts of cultural destruction.
According to The New York Times, the sculpture has been commissioned by the High Line Plinth and will be displayed in the elevated High Line park, near Tenth Avenue and 30th Street in Manhattan. The installation will remain on public view for 18 months.
The High Line Commission has described the project as a memorial to a cultural catastrophe that, despite its physical destruction, has not lost its essence or meaning. The reference is to the monumental Bamyan Buddha statues—known as Salsal—constructed in the 6th century and destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001.
Nguyen has said that reintroducing the image of the Bamyan Buddha into a public space in New York will revive global dialogue about that cultural tragedy. Born in Vietnam in 1976, Nguyen migrated to the United States as a refugee at the age of three, was raised there, and later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts. He currently lives in Vietnam, and his artistic work focuses on themes of war, trauma, memory, and healing.
His proposal was selected from 56 submissions representing artists from 31 countries. In the final stage, 12 shortlisted artists presented models of their works at the High Line in 2024, with public feedback playing a role in the final selection. Alan van Capelle, a member of the selection committee, described the project as an intelligent response to an era marked by extremism and the destruction of cultural heritage.
Nguyen designed the sculpture as a three-dimensional model based on photographs of the damaged Bamyan Buddha and worked with Vietnamese stone carvers to hand-carve it from four massive blocks of sandstone.
Notably, the hands of the sculpture are made from shell casings and melted remnants of bullets and rockets left behind by decades of war in Afghanistan. According to the artist, these materials have been transformed from instruments of destruction into symbols of welcome and compassion.
Nguyen emphasized that the artwork conveys a message that even amid violence and chaos, peace, resilience, and humanity can be affirmed—a message that will be symbolically broadcast to the world through the gleaming bronze hands of the statue against the New York skyline.