Simona Prives’ digital artwork, “EVEN WHILE THE DUST MOVES,” is an intricate constellation of evolving dreamscapes. The artwork is a site-responsive meditation on Fulton Center, Lower Manhattan, and imaginary commutes. Imagery shifts from subterranean to skyscape, moving alongside MTA commuters as they travel from underground to aboveground.

Prives’ digital collage and animation process mirrors the multilevel and multifunctional space of Fulton Center. Hundreds of layers of a wide range of media — including video, drawings, ink paintings, and printmaking — comprise each animated artwork within the larger whole. Each digital screen offers glimpses into another world, a temporary escape from the daily commute into parallel, fantastical universes. As travelers move through the three levels of Fulton Center, they are presented with scenes of diverse landmasses and skies, interwoven with reimagined environments on which acrobats, dancers, and workers all move.

“EVEN WHILE THE DUST MOVES” provides MTA riders with a journey through expansive galaxies, ocean depths, and geological transformations as they venture onward to their next destination.

Presented by MTA Arts & Design with technical support from Westfield and ANC Sports.

Simona Prives is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Having received her MFA from Pratt Institute, Prives creates animated collages that incorporate a variety of themes and materials. Her multimedia work is about locating ourselves in the built and natural environments at this particular moment in history. She explores themes that focus on the process of decomposition and reconstruction, the dialectic of growth and decay, and that examine our complex relationship between the organic and the man-made.

Prives has been awarded multiple residencies and fellowships, including at Harvestworks, Vermont Studio Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica di Venezia, and 4Heads. Prives’ work has been shown in galleries throughout New York and the United States, as well as at China Arts Museum in Shanghai and in Tokyo, Japan.