On a Bustling New York City Street Stood a Door That Hid Away a Bizarre World of Ruin & Desolation

Grey rubble, fetid water, screaming parakeets.

That's what lay in wait for any one who entered a storefront off a bustling New York City street late last month.

The space, named simply "Untitled (Debris)," was assembled, in part, from the rubble of war-torn Syria. Its creator, Martin Roth, sought to bring the violence and despair of ISIS, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Russian and coalition bombing campaigns to the streets of one of the most glamorous and prosperous neighborhoods in the world.

Step Into the Hidden World of Ruin:

"The scene is unsettling yet familiar; it resembles any number of conflict zones we are accustomed to viewing on the nightly news," read a press release on Roth's exhibit.

Perhaps more unsettling were the screeching parakeets that roosted overhead, raining feces onto visitors and into the concrete rubble and the bullfrogs that plopped through inches of fetid water that flooded the structure's dank subterranean space

“We see so many images of this place [Syria] but I wanted to somehow make it real,” Roth told The Creators Project earlier this year. “Bringing the rubble here was strangely simple."

Roth did not respond to an interview request from TheBlaze. His exhibition ran at the Louis B. James gallery on Orchard Street until late October. It has since been removed.

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