Public Art Fund’s On the Flip Side Brings Photography to 300 Bus Shelters in Three Cities

From February 4 through April 5, 2026, Public Art Fund will present On the Flip Side, a photography exhibition installed on 300 JCDecaux bus shelters across New York City, Chicago, and Boston. Instead of asking audiences to enter a museum, the project meets people where they already are: waiting for a ride, walking to work, moving through a neighborhood at street level.

The exhibition features one new work by each of six photographers whose images circulate widely through major publications and brands, alongside their fine art practices: Kennedi Carter, Lougè Delcy, Camila Falquez, Ruby Okoro, Dana Scruggs, and Juan Veloz. Public Art Fund’s premise is straightforward. These artists are often recognized for high-visibility commissions and celebrity portraits, and On the Flip Side redirects attention toward the personal narratives and creative visions that shape their practices.

What “the flip side” looks like in public

Bus shelters are built for ads, quick persuasion, and repeated brand impressions. On the Flip Side treats that same platform as an artistic encounter, offering tender and nuanced reflections on identity, place, and collective futures in a format designed for everyday life. The project’s curatorial framing is about visibility and authorship: when commercial images travel, public attention often lands on the celebrity, the product, the campaign. Here, the emphasis shifts to the artists’ interior worlds and the subjects they choose to hold close.

The six works include both single-subject portraits and group portraits, with distinct moods and visual languages. Juan Veloz contributes a tender portrait of his grandmother, described as an homage to the matriarchs of his family. Ruby Okoro presents a colorful collage of dancers reaching toward a shared goal, a picture of ambition made collective. Across the series, Public Art Fund highlights themes that stretch beyond portraiture as a genre: familial heritage, material value, gender identity, and ecology.

Objects and styling carry meaning as much as the sitters themselves. The release points to details like Delcy’s cowrie shells, Falquez’s silk, and Carter’s black frizzle chicken as connective tissue to African diasporic histories, while still centering the interior lives of the people pictured.

Six artists, one platform

Public Art Fund positions the participating photographers as artists who move fluidly between commercial and fine art practices. Their bios read like a map of where contemporary photography lives right now: magazines, brands, museums, festivals, touring exhibitions, and the steady redefinition of portraiture as both document and invention.

Kennedi Carter’s work is described as centering the aesthetics and sociopolitical dimensions of Black life, including “skin, texture, peace, love and community.” The release notes her work with publications and brands including British Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Essence, Google, and Apple, along with a major milestone in 2020 when she photographed Beyoncé for British Vogue, becoming the publication’s youngest cover photographer. It also cites fine art acquisitions by institutions including RISD, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Wilson Centre for Photography in London.

Lougè Delcy is described as documenting Africa and its diaspora “in the most beautiful light,” with imagery known for rich color, saturated tones, and movement shaped by Haitian heritage and a Brooklyn upbringing. The release lists collaborators including National Geographic, Christian Louboutin, New Balance, and Ebony, and notes fine art exhibitions at the Anacostia Community Museum and the International African American Museum.

Camila Falquez, born in Mexico City and raised in Spain, is described as drawing from fashion and portrait traditions to honor the spectrum of social and gender diversity, channeling Surrealist conventions with a strong color palette. The release notes that her photographs are in permanent collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Dean Collection, Montclair Art Museum, and Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Ruby Okoro, a self-taught Nigerian artist, is described as creating conceptual, vibrant images that explore self-expression, identity, the human journey, and relationships, with photography treated as storytelling. The release notes portraits of widely recognized music artists including Asake, Ayra Starr, Wizkid, and Adekunle Gold, as well as exhibitions at Fotografiska Shanghai, PhotoVogue Festival, and Galerie Gomis in Paris, plus inclusion in In the Black Fantastic by Ekow Eshun.

Dana Scruggs’ work is described as focusing on movement, abstraction, and emotion drawn from the bodily form, with commissions for outlets including Rolling Stone, TIME, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair. The release notes acquisitions by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, along with global touring through The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion and Fotografiska.

Juan Veloz, born in Brooklyn, is described as self-taught, with work rooted in Latino heritage and collaborations including Vogue, Dior, Netflix, and Nike, alongside portraits of celebrities including SZA, Usher, and Gabrielle Union.

How to experience it

Starting February 4, 2026, the works will appear on JCDecaux bus shelters throughout New York City, Chicago, and Boston, with the project running through April 5. Public Art Fund also notes that the exhibition can be explored anytime on the free Bloomberg Connects app, which effectively extends the show beyond the streets and into a pocket-sized archive.

An in-person Public Art Fund Talk follows on February 18, 6:30–7:30pm ET at The Cooper Union (Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Sq, New York, NY 10008). Moderated by assistant curator Jenée-Daria Strand, the conversation centers on the artists’ practices and how they navigate the boundary between commercial and fine art production. Registration is available on the Public Art Fund website.

Presentation and support

On the Flip Side is curated by Public Art Fund Assistant Curator Jenée-Daria Strand. Public Art Fund describes its mission as bringing dynamic contemporary art to broad audiences in New York City and beyond through ambitious free exhibitions that create powerful experiences with art and the urban environment. Champion support for the project is provided by the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, with special thanks to JCDecaux.