At New York University’s commencement ceremonies next week, graduating senior Giulia Fleishman will wear a purple cap and gown — and a bold henna tattoo across her forehead that reads “everything will be taken away.”

“Here, I’ve just spent four years, at $40,000 a year, at NYU, and I’m going to graduate with these words written in front of where my brain is,” she said yesterday while waiting for the henna to be applied.

Ms. Fleishman, 21, is among scores of New Yorkers who are sporting nearly identical henna tattoos and keeping journals about their experience doing so. The tattoos, which fade in about 10 days, are written backward so a mirror image of the message is legible.

Called “Everything #10,” the henna project was the brainchild of a Berlin-based conceptual artist, Adrian Piper, and organized
by a nonprofit organization that sponsors public art exhibits, Creative Time. It is part of a series of experimental art projects being produced over a 33-day period to celebrate Creative Time’s 33rd anniversary.

During that time, Creative Time has been the force behind more than 300 art projects, including the “Tribute in Light” memorial at ground zero between 2002 and 2005. The organization receives about one-fifth of its annual revenue from government grants, and won $213,000 in taxpayer-funded grants in 2004, according to its most tax return available online.

In fiscal 2007, the New York State Council on the Arts, for example, has granted Creative Time a total of $95,360 for general operating expenses and support, and a capital project that would create additional office space.

The Cooper Union and NYU spaces where the tattoos were applied on Tuesday and yesterday and the henna were donated to Creative Time. Organization officials said the only cost associated with “Everything #10” was hiring a henna artist, Mollie King. Her fees go as high as $125, but Ms. King said she was working at a discounted rate, which neither she nor Creative Time would disclose.

More than 60 people received the forehead tattoos. They ranged from a Vietnam veterans en route to a Veteran’s Affairs hospital to a devout Buddhist who saw an anti-materialist message in the phrase, project producer Gavin Kroeber said.

Waiting to be tattooed, a 28-year-old filmmaker, Kasia Witek said she thought the phrase was uplifting, explaining: “I think it means that everything negative will be taken away — that it will be stripped away.”

An NYU junior, Christine Kim, 20, saw a darker meaning in the message. “We’re all human, and ultimately we’re all going to die,” the social work student said, pondering the words that were about to be written on her forehead. “I do believe in God, and that we are taken away, and that death is not just something that happens.”

Ms. Kim said she hoped the henna experience would boost her confidence. “I’m not going to look cool with this, but it’s a way to prove to myself that my self-confidence doesn’t have to depend on the way I appear on the outside,” she said.

Meanwhile, a writer from Long Island City, Melanie Blythe, 30, said the tattoo represented a turning point after her recent divorce. “It’s a little wacky, a little crazy, but I’m living my life in a different way now — taking more risks,” she said.

Ms. Blythe predicted the reaction of strangers would depend on which New York neighborhood she was in. “I think in the East Village, in Brooklyn — places where they’re used to artists — everyone will be cool with it,” she said. “If I’m in a more conservative place, or a more business-oriented environment, I think people are going to be a little freaked out.”

A college student from East New York, Juice Robinson, 41, said he found the tattoo idea repulsive. “Who in their right mind would put a tattoo on their forehead? I thought, ‘Wow, they need help.'”

While yesterday was the last day to get the “Everything #10” tattoo, Creative Time’s 33rd anniversary celebration runs through June 2. Commemorative events range from watching the quartet of artists known as Gelitin dig and refill a giant hole on Coney Island Beach every day for a week, to lining city streets for a robot parade orchestrated by multimedia artist Javier Téllez.