“Tidal Crossing”: Jean Shin turns military camouflage into an anti-war installation at Brooklyn Army Terminal

Korean-American artist Jean Shin has created the new installation “Tidal Crossing” (2026) at Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The work consists of three military-style nets placed within the arches of the historic skybridge, among which the artist has added camouflage banners overlaid with images of flora from the many countries where the United States has waged wars. As Hyperallergic writes, the installation opened to the public on September 19 and is the latest addition to the year-long public exhibition “In Plain Sight,” which brings together 12 Brooklyn artists at the terminal and at the nearby Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market.

The banners play with military camouflage patterns since World War II: from the Pacific War design nicknamed “Frogskin,” to the “Chocolate Chip” configuration of the Gulf War, and up to “Digital Camo” — the almost QR-code-like pattern of the 2000s–2010s, used in Afghanistan and Iraq to evade online detection systems. Each banner has a distinct environmental theme: the middle panel includes shells, mussels and seaweed.

The contrast between the blue, green and sand-colored camouflage strips and the terminal’s industrial concrete is deliberate: the military pattern, created to hide, here betrays itself and opens the question of to whom a place belongs — is it the camouflage of America’s secret military missions, the transport of native plants to new places, or the forced displacement of communities hit by wars. The theme resonates strongly with Sunset Park’s immigrant communities.

As Shin herself tells Hyperallergic: “This project makes me think about the question ‘who belongs here?’ What seems foreign at one moment is actually very familiar.” The choice of location is no accident: Brooklyn Army Terminal was once the largest military supply base in the U.S. — and the installation turns that history against itself, making the camouflage of war a covering for life, migration and memory.