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Come spring 2026, New Yorkers strolling the High Line will encounter a new, towering neighbor with a backstory that stretches across centuries, continents and conflicts.
A 27-foot-tall sandstone Buddha, carved in Vietnam and inspired by a monument destroyed in Afghanistan, is set to take over the High Line Plinth at 10th Avenue and 30th Street for an 18-month run. The sculpture, dubbed The Light That Shines Through the Universe, by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, has just been named the fifth High Line Plinth commission. It reimagines one of the Bamiyan Buddhas, colossal sixth-century statues that once stood in central Afghanistan before being destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Today, those Buddhas exist only as empty niches carved into a cliff.
Carved from sandstone, the High Line version isn’t a replica. It’s an homage—described as an “echo”—meant to summon memory rather than recreate history. The title references the nickname locals once gave the larger Bamiyan Buddha: “Salsal” which translates to “the light shines through the universe.”
One of the sculpture’s most striking features is its hands. The original Bamiyan Buddhas lost theirs long before their final destruction as victims of centuries of iconoclastic attacks. Nguyen has turned them into shiny prosthetics, cast from melted-down brass artillery shells and shaped into mudras symbolizing fearlessness and compassion. He’s also positioned them with a visible gap between hand and body, serving as a reminder of the damage that can’t be undone.
The artillery shells also carry another layer of meaning. Nguyen, who lives and works in Vietnam, draws a direct line to the Vietnam War and the country’s ongoing struggle with unexploded ordnance, remnants of what’s widely considered the largest aerial bombardment in history.
Installed above a busy Manhattan intersection, The Light That Shines Through the Universe will be impossible to miss. It’s an important reminder that when culture is attacked, erased or fractured, its afterlife can still loom large—sometimes even 27 feet tall.