BY: Amira Turner
Borough Hall in Brooklyn is home to several statues commemorating historic moments in US history, from abolitionist Henry Beecher to former President John F. Kennedy, but its latest art installation is a large-scale monument to the city’s more vibrant recent history. Rappin’ Max Robot, an 18-foot metal statue, landed in Borough Hall at the beginning of November 2024, accompanied by his 10-foot-long boombox.
In a speech at the statues’ October 31st unveiling, Borough President Antonio Reynoso noted the sculpture’s celebration of Hip Hop, a genre created in New York only five decades ago. “Hip Hop is so much more than music. It’s culture,” Reynoso said. “New Yorkers developed a system of expression that transcends national boundaries and fosters unity. Rappin’ Max Robot epitomizes hip-hop’s evolution.”
The Rappin’ Max Robot sculpture is based on a character created by New York artist Eric Orr in 1986 for his independently published comic of the same name. The comic was inspired by Orr’s love of Hip Hop, his home borough, the Bronx, and a particular dance trend, “I was a big fan of the robot dance when it came out in the mid-70s, and I’m a big fan of robots in general,” he said. Since its release 37 years ago, the comic has been celebrated as the first-ever comic book about Hip Hop.
The sculpture was created in eight weeks over the summer by Welder Underground, a paid apprenticeship program that helps young people get involved with the world of welding. All of the materials required for creating the piece were donated by ESAB, a leading welding materials company.
Marc Levin, the co-executive director of Welder Underground, worked hands-on with apprentices to teach them the skill of welding. “The challenges of learning a new skill that is complicated and dangerous and needs constant awareness creates a focus that lends itself to learning at a very high level,” he said. Despite the challenges the project presented, the Welder Underground team was able to forge strong connections. “The apprentices worked together, looked out for each other, and became a family of sorts,” he said.
Sculptor and welder Jack Howard-Potter was a mentor on the project. For him, the process was about introducing young people to the diversity the trade provides. He wanted the apprentices to understand that welding isn’t just a trade based in construction, but that it can also be applied to arts and design. “Showing the apprentices that welding can be accessible and possible is the first step to breaking the stereotype of who can be a welder and what they can do with it. Building a monumental robot statue is the second step in showing them that the stereotype is not the reality,” he said.
Orr, who started his career as a graffiti artist, shared the ‘humbling’ feeling of seeing his work presented on such a large, three-dimensional scale. “It’s a fairly new medium for graffiti and street artists to work in. The fact that the Rappin Max Robot sculpture is able to occupy a small piece of real estate in New York City for a short period is amazing to me,” he said. “I imagine it’s the same feeling graffiti artists felt when they first saw one of their massive top-to-bottom burner pieces they created in the shadows of some tunnel or layup in the dark, roll out into the light for everyone to see.”
As for Levin, he hopes the sculpture will inspire communities to come together and collaborate: “I hope [people] feel the potential that exists when individuals come together to make something out of their imaginations–and that creating is more possible than they might imagine.”
Although it’s a monument to one of New York’s largest cultural contributions, Rappin’ Max Robot will not be a permanent resident of the city. The statue was created as a gift to Paris, to commemorate the historic inclusion of Break Dancing at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The sculpture will remain in Borough Hall for the next six weeks, then will be moved to the Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx for a year, before being placed on permanent view at Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad in Paris.