Click Your Heels Together Three Times by Adam Nathaniel Furman

The title of the piece Click Your Heels Together Three Times ‘is a reference to Judy Garland’s ruby shoes in The Wizard of Oz, Judy being a huge gay icon, and the movie being an important work in the queer filmic canon, with this installation being the architectural scale equivalent of her shoes in the film.’ says Adam. Dorothy, and the friends she makes along the way, seek to find their inner desires within the escapist world of Oz before the infamous ruby slippers ground this journey of self-discovery in reality by returning her home. Adam’s work acts similarly by embedding queer coded artworks and structures within the public realm, transporting them from their imagination and into our reality.

With its opening scenes set in the black and white world of small-town Kansas, The Wizard of Oz bursts into a technicolour dream world once Dorothy enters the world of Oz. Parallels can be seen here with the layering of Adam’s rainbow gradient over the existing grey toned structure, taking a moment of structural bravura and modernist strength, and transforming it with a celebratory sheath of colourful, dramatic drag. A queer outfit that kaleidoscopically reinvents a piece of infrastructure used by tens of thousands a day, which also adds a bright and proud note of colour to the square in which it sits.

Launching in Pride Month, this installation will join our permanent collection of over 100 artworks. To explore the UK’s largest free-to-visit, outdoor, public art collection then check out our Art on the Estate page, or download our digital art guide on Bloomberg Connects – the free arts and culture app.

Click here to read our Q&A with Adam

Co-edited by Adam and Josh Mardell, the RIBA published ‘Queer Spaces, An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places & Stories’ is a landmark book that tells the stories of queer spaces all around the world. To shop the book, Adam’s merch, and discover their other projects, visit adamnathanielfurman.com