Yuge Zhou, Trampoline Color Exercise, 2021-2024.

Featuring Works by Artists Yuge Zhou (June), Rosa Barba (July) and Bianca Abdi-Boragi (August) 

Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, is pleased to present their Midnight Moment Summer Season featuring video works by multidisciplinary artists Yuge Zhou (June), Rosa Barba (July) and Bianca Abdi-Boragi (August).

Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on over 92 electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight. The Summer 2025 program showcases video works that explore geopolitics through gymnastics; experiment with cinematic storytelling using celluloid itself; and stage the absurdity of our culture of consumption. 

Yuge Zhou, Trampoline Color Exercise
In Partnership with Artnet
June 1-30, 2025 | Nightly 11:57- Midnight

Yuge Zhou’s hypnotic work Trampoline Color Exercise is a moving-image collage of leaping gymnasts whose uniforms and identities shapeshift as they flip and tumble on pink gridded trampolines. Created by manipulating aerial vantage points from archival broadcasts of Olympic Games footage, the artwork is a bird’s-eye meditation on the human form and the athletic pursuit of perfection. The mass of figures also reads as an abstract play of primary colors—a timely yet subtle nod to global national flags and fluctuating affiliations in an ever-changing geopolitical climate.

“Trampoline Color Exercise was created over the past few years amid intense political and international divisions, and it now feels especially timely,” says Zhou. “I’m thrilled to see it presented in such an iconic, larger-than-life space, where it will be experienced by a diverse audience from all over the world. At its heart, the work is a celebration of globalization and a reflection on allegiance.”

Rosa Barba, Charge
Presented with The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 
July 1-31, 2025 | Nightly 11:57- Midnight

In Charge, artist Rosa Barba explores light as agent in a rhythmic, pulsating assemblage activated by landscape, radio waves, colour, stellar spheres and optics, and evokes sunsets, astrophysics experiments apparatuses, or planetary imagery.  

As part of her broader practice, Barba’s work reflects on human impact on the environment, drawing inspiration from natural elements. For Barba, cinema “allows time and space to vibrate, collapse, overlap, and extend.” In a bustling place like Times Square, moments to pause and appreciate the natural beauty of the world are rare. Charge offers a brief—but crucial—reprieve from the urban chaos.

Barba’s Midnight Moment Charge is a special edit of her work of the same title, co-commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and The Vega Foundation in Toronto. Iterations of Charge will also be on view this summer at both MoMA and Moynihan Train Hall.

The Vega Foundation is a co-commissioner of the original film. 

Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Cotton Candy
August 1-31, 2025 | Nightly 11:57- Midnight

Working across sculpture, video, installation, performance, and painting, Bianca Abdi-Boragi creates artworks that often tend towards the absurd, employing found materials, unexpected environments, and humor as an entry point to the avant garde and cultural critiques. Cotton Candy is Abdi-Boragi’s short experimental film featuring a young woman, played by Jonela Ruka, transfixed in front of a mirror, slowly consuming a bouffant of pink spun sugar styled atop her head. Shot in an empty furniture store in Ridgewood, Queens, the endless rows of chandeliers and ornate furnishings mirror the repetition and excess of the protagonist’s compulsive consumption. Abdi-Boragi’s video-performance plays with notions of fulfillment and offers a surrealist, with a touch of Baroque, take on the purgatory of consumerism in a post-colonialist world. “What do we consume, and what consumes us?” asks the artist.

ABOUT YUGE ZHOU
Yuge Zhou (b. 1985) has exhibited nationally and internationally in prominent art and public venues. Her work has been featured in the New York Magazine, Hyperallergic and Frieze, and recently acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation. Yuge is the recipient of the 2024 Joyce Foundation Artadia Award and a 2021 Artist Fellowship Award in Media Arts from Illinois Arts Council. ​​Growing up in the second stage of China’s economic reform, Yuge witnessed a massive influx of migration, expansion and globalization. At the age of five, she became a household name in China as the singer for popular children’s TV series. Yuge came to the US almost two decades ago to earn a degree in computer science and subsequently moved into video art and installations. As she has moved between continents and from the East coast to the Midwest, she has become deeply intrigued with coexistence and our social encounters across urban spaces. Her recent projects explore the geographical, ideological and emotional distance between her homeland and America—her adopted country—and broader challenges of transcending separation.

ABOUT ARTNET
Artnet is the leading platform for the global art market, with journalism, insights and tools trusted to broaden the knowledge of professionals, private collectors and art enthusiasts alike. Artnet users and clients are able to navigate the art market with ease and, through its marketplace, buy and sell with confidence. Artnet provides users with the clearest picture of an ever-changing art world and is the leading global destination for art, with more than 60 million users annually.

Artnet’s co-presentation of Yuge Zhou’s Midnight Moment in June marks the fourth iteration of an ongoing partnership that celebrates digital art in the heart of New York City.

ABOUT ROSA BARBA 
Rosa Barba was born in Italy, and currently lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne followed by a fellowship at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; and has completed her PhD with the title On the Anarchic Organization of Cinematic Spaces: Evoking Spaces beyond Cinema at the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University in 2018. Rosa Barba’s work has been exhibited at prestigious institutions and biennials worldwide: MALI Museum, Lima, Tate Modern, London, MoMA, New York, Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré, Tours, Cukrarna, Ljubljana, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Yokohama Triennial; Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku, Finland; CCA Kitakyushu; Armory Park Avenue, New York; Kunsthalle Bremen; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Palacio de Cristal, Madrid; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; Vienna Secession; Malmö Konsthall; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Albertinum, Dresden and at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA. Barba participated in the 7th Beaufort Triennial, Belgium; 32nd São Paulo Biennial; 53rd and 56th Biennale di Venezia; 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art; 19th Biennale of Sydney; Performa, New York; International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia and Liverpool Biennale. In 2021, Rosa Barba inaugurated Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage, a permanent Open-Air Cinema sculpture in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Deryneia, Cyprus and Pillage of the Sea, and a permanent sculpture in the sea in Ostende, Belgium, during the Beaufort Biennial. The artist has been awarded various international prizes, and her work is in the permanent collections of dozens of institutions worldwide. 

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (MoMA)
Founded in 1929 by three progressive women under an educational charter, The Museum of Modern Art connects people from around the world to the art of our time. MoMA aspires to be a catalyst for experimentation, learning, and creativity, a gathering place for all, and a home for artists and their ideas. MoMA realizes its mission by establishing, caring for, and presenting a dynamic collection of the highest order that reflects the vitality and complexity of modern and contemporary art; by welcoming millions of people every year to explore its exhibitions and participate in onsite and online programs; by sustaining a library, archives, and conservation laboratory that are recognized as international centers of research; and by supporting innovative scholarship and publications.

ABOUT THE VEGA FOUNDATION
The Vega Foundation is committed to cultivating new ideas and connections through encounters with artists’ film and video. We provide critical support for artists through meaningful investments in the production of ambitious new work and the stewardship of a growing collection. Vega’s curatorial program is dedicated to exhibiting these exceptional works through collaborations with Canadian and international institutions. By expanding access, we seek to grow appreciation for moving image practices and facilitate vibrant conversations that reflect the pressing issues of our time.

Website: vegafoundation.com

Instagram: @thevegafoundation 

ABOUT BIANCA ABDI-BORAGI 
Rosa Barba (b. 1972) was born in Italy, and currently lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne followed by a fellowship at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; and has completed her PhD with the title On the Anarchic Organisation of Cinematic Spaces: Evoking Spaces beyond Cinema at the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University in 2018. Rosa Barba’s work has been exhibited at prestigious institutions and biennials worldwide: MALI Museum, Lima, Tate Modern, London, MoMA, New York, Centre de Création contemporaine Olivier Debré, Tours, Cukrarna, Ljubljana, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Yokohama Triennial; Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku, Finland; CCA Kitakyushu; Armory Park Avenue, New York; Kunsthalle Bremen; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Palacio de Cristal, Madrid; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; Vienna Secession; Malmö Konsthall; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Albertinum, Dresden and at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA. Barba participated in the 7th Beaufort Triennial, Belgium; 32nd São Paulo Biennial; 53rd and 56th Biennale di Venezia; 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art; 19th Biennale of Sydney; Performa, New York; International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia and Liverpool Biennale. In 2021, Rosa Barba inaugurated a permanent Open-Air Cinema sculpture in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Deryneia, Cyprus and Pillage of the Sea, and a permanent sculpture in the sea in Ostende, during the Beaufort Biennial. The artist has been awarded various international prizes, and her work is in the permanent collections of dozens of institutions worldwide. 

ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world’s most iconic urban places. Through the Square’s electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance’s own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators, such as Charles Gaines, Joan Jonas, Jeffrey Gibson, Pamela Council, Mel Chin and Kehinde Wiley, to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a cultural district and place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the arts program ensures these qualities remain central to the district’s unique identity.