SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, is the most expensive sports stadium in the world. The complex — which is home to the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers — cost over $5 billion to build and will feature not only a 70,000-seat stadium and 6,000-seat adjacent performance venue, but a connected park and artificial lake.
Over the five years of design and construction, the stadium has sparked conversations around everything from its intentionally Southern Californian design to gentrification in the surrounding Inglewood area. The stadium takes up a lot of space, both in the minds of Southern Californians and physically. Pomona College art professor Sandeep Mukherjee, whose artwork will be right in the middle of it all, is well aware of the scale of the project — and he wants his art to instill the space with some life.
“They cut a lot of trees to make the space,” he said. “I wanted to bring those trees back into the installation.”
Mukherjee was selected for the commission in 2019 after a recommendation from three different museum curators he had worked with, including those from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. He ended up being one of three artists under consideration, all of whom were directed to think carefully about the SoFi space when developing their potential ideas.
