"PROSPECT.1" WAS DIFFERENT in city, marshaling a host of local, organizers, with a modest $3.5-million spirit from other biennials, as Dan national and international artists--a budget, to mount a surprisingly ambi- Cameron, its artistic director, rightly New Orleans version of the Florentine tious multivenue exhibition. Legions pointed out at the press conference "mud angels." of volunteers provided assistance at that preceded its November opening. Some 100,000 viewers were expected all levels, creating a community- Buoyed by an urgent, utopian sense to attend the biennial over the 11 based, cooperative venture. of mission--which also kept it more weeks of its run, from Nov. 1, 2008, A veteran curator of international on-message than most events of this through Jan. 18, 2009, making a siz- exhibitions, formerly at New York's magnitude--the spectacle was con- able impact on the city's shaky econ- New Museum, Cameron is also the ceived for the sake of a traumatized omy. [As we go to press, a final tally director of visual arts at the city. Cameron called New Orleans our is not yet available, although the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Venice, but it might also be compared 20,000-plus visitors for the first month New Orleans and a founder of U.S. to flood-ravaged Florence, where in clearly fell short of projections.] Biennial, Inc., a nonprofit whose sole 1966 the world rushed in to help res- Indeed, "Prospect.1" was conceived function is to produce New Orleans cue countless historical treasures. as a stimulus package--art as a ges- biennials. Cameron, who describes Three years after Hurricane Katrina, ture of compassion, bringing fresh "Prospect.1" as the largest interna- New Orleans could still use similar tourist dollars. Toward that end, a tional biennial in the U.S., is already aid. Enter Cameron, who has long number of artists declined payment planning "Prospect.2" and has per- been infatuated with the fabled Creole for production costs, enabling the sonally committed to at least five edi- tions of the show, hoping to make the Ghada Amer (Egypt) and El Anatsui ance center just a few days before biennial as great a draw as the city's (Ghana). But most, although fairly the opening. One highlight, a collabo- beloved Jazz Fest. The first install- well-known, are not yet ubiquitous on ration between Thai artist Navin ment featured 81 artists and collec- the global circuit--and therefore all the Rawanchaikul and Canadian artist tives from 34 countries, with 10 par- more interesting. The event's 31 ven- Tyler Russell, developed from ticipants (among them Willie Birch, ues included museums, community Rawanchaikul's Navin Party, an inter- Luis Cruz Azaceta and Roy art centers and alternative art spaces active website for anyone named Ferdinand, Jr.)--a very respectable 12 as well as churches, schools, aban- Navin. Using work commissioned percent--hailing from Louisiana. Many doned lots and houses, warehouses, from Thai illustrators, the pair fes- of the artists, rather than making one a furniture store (ideal for the large, tooned the mortuary with posters more signature piece, produced site- hand-painted, homoerotic photo- commemorating the life of local specific works inspired by the special graphs of Paris-based Pierre et favorite Narvin Kimball (whose first circumstances of New Orleans. Gilles), a garage (sheltering New name sounds like Naahvin when said The majority of the international Orleans-born, New York-based with a southern drawl), a New Orleans artists were born outside the U.S. and Jacqueline Humphries's lovely Preservation Hall Jazz Band musician Western Europe. Some are marquee abstract paintings, interspersed with who was evacuated after the flood names, such as William Kentridge black rectangles she painted directly and died in 2006 in South Carolina. (South Africa), Cai Guo-Qiang, Xu on the brick walls) and even a funeral The piece tied in with a raucous, Bing (both China), Shirin Neshat (Iran), parlor that had become a perform- massively attended jazz-funeral march held on Nov. 1. like a brilliant-cut diamond, the work's Make It Right project visible across While other biennials might prompt freestanding steel frame was filled the fields. one to question the advisability of with athletic equipment flanked by In the vicinity was New York artist scattering work throughout a city, two walls, one mirrored, the other Paul Villinski's FEMA-style trailer-- "Prospect.1" motivated trekkers to pinned with local announcements. more handsome, spacious and light- see not only the art but also the still These life-goes-on elements, present- filled than the government models, recovering New Orleans, from neigh- ed within a jewel-shaped structure, minus the formaldehyde fumes that borhoods more or less restored or constituted a symbol of self-reliance made them toxic. The dwelling has a never greatly damaged to districts and strength, emphasizing the func- geodesic skylight, a large window, an that remain haunting in their near tion of church and gym alike as sites exterior wall that drops down as a vacancy. The crippled Lower Ninth of great community value. platform, and a neatly compact bed- Ward, the area most devastated by Nearby on Andry Street, Argentinian room and bathroom. Powered by Katrina, became ground zero for the artist Leandro Erlich erected a win- solar panels, it generated enough biennial. There artists focused prima- dow framed by a broken wall of fiber- energy to also light the house next to rily on the loss and long-delayed glass bricks thrust high, like a protest it. Villinski, who has spent much time reclamation of shelter, and on the sign, on a slanted metal ladder. A sur- in New Orleans throughout his life, complex history of the neighborhood. real image of the storm's damages, conceived the mobile live/work studio New Yorker Nari Ward planted his the piece echoed the detached state in response to the displacement of Diamond Gym: Action Network (2008) of the smashed house next to it, New Orleans artists after Katrina. A inside the newly restored Battle offering an edgy contrast to the sort of downsized, transportable Ground Baptist Church on the pre- spanking new, beautifully designed, Usonian house for the 21st century, it sciently named Flood Street. Shaped pastel-colored houses of Brad Pitt's recalls other inventive shelter projects by Krzysztof Wodiczko, Andrea Zittel Ninth before the flood. They credit flamelike palette as incendiary in and Samuel Mockbee. Bradford with discovering their work intent, symbolically setting fire to one South African-born Robin Rhode and helping to fund the center, one of of the few intact houses in the area. refreshed an abandoned concrete several spontaneous collaborations Given the upbeat nature of Grosse's public toilet, turning it into a medita- that occurred during the course of previous work, a more .likely reading tion space by inserting into its floor a this biennial, from the planning stage infers a purifying and illuminating short stainless-steel pipe that spewed forward. motive, the bright paint serving as an water up in a column, an activated Across from the L9 Center, agent of restoration. Duchamp or a low-budget Olafur Nairobiborn, New York-based artist Text-based works included Ghada Eliasson. The L.A. artist Mark Wangechi Mutu constructed a house Amer's circular metal armature at Bradford contributed one of the frame out of wooden beams. Strung Common Ground Relief, a communi- poster works of the biennial, a loom- with lights, it glimmered at night like ty-based organization for Katrina vic- ing--but obviously unseaworthy-- an apparition. The work was erected tims. Happily Ever After (2005) func- three-story ark made from plywood on a recently laid foundation, the only tioned as a trellis for honeysuckle and panels salvaged from the storm's part of a home-replacement project roses, with thin rods spelling out the debris. With shredded, faded notices completed before the contractor van- title--which was criticized for unseem- still clinging to its surface, the craft ished with the owner's money. Mutu, ly optimism by those who missed the was beached on Coffin Avenue (New sympathetic to the plight of the irony. On the corner of St. Claude Orleans street names have a fatalistic exploited woman, Mrs. Sarah (the eld- Street and McShane Place stood poetics of their own), going nowhere erly widow of a celebrated New Indiana-based Kay Rosen's bold red- fast, like the Bush administration's Orleans drummer), made a print edi- and-yellow billboard, New Orleans rebuilding efforts. tion to raise the $120,000 needed to (2005). Its large block type spelled out New Orleans photographers Keith build her a new house. OHNOAH, southern, perhaps, for "oh Calhoun and Chandra McCormick Elsewhere, an exuberantly spray- no" and a shout-out to Noah, an earli- founded the nearby L9 Center for the painted real house glowed jubilantly er flood survivor whose name is Arts, an artist-sponsored community yellow and bright orange in the sun- echoed by NOAA (the National exhibition space, where they installed light on Dauphine Street, as did the Oceanic and Atmospheric their own storm-salvaged photos bushes, grass and fence in front. Administration), a vital source of documenting everyday life--punctuat- Some viewers parsed German storm advisories for coastal residents. ed by smiles and music--in the Lower abstract painter Katharina Grosse's Berlin-based Monica Bonvicini's huge stainless-steel letters forming the Stones' 1969 concert at Altamont. word "DESIRE," a term associated William Kentridge's eerily beautiful with New Orleans in myriad ways, anamorphic film What Will Come (has gleamed beckoningly from the roof of already come), 2007, critiques colo- the New Orleans Museum of Art nialism in Ethiopia. McCallum & Tarry, (NOMA). a husband-and-wife team from New At the New Orleans African American York, installed 106 mug shots of pro- Museum--which occupies a lovely testors (including Rosa Parks and 1828-29 villa located in Treme, the Martin Luther King, Jr.) arrested dur- oldest surviving African-American ing the historic Montgomery, Ala., bus community in the country--artists boycotts in 1955-56. Hung salon style examined galvanizing events that and formally framed, the pictures-- expose racial prejudice. Georgia- printed on silk scrim over matching born, New York-based Rico Gatson's oil-on-canvas portraits--grant due Spirit, Myth, Ritual and Liberation dignity to these pioneers of the Civil (2008), a DVD installation about the Rights movement. symbolic power of pop-cultural The Lower Ninth Ward Village, anoth- events, features footage (excerpted er post-Katrina community organiza- from the Maysles brothers' 1970 film tion, hosted Freeport-born, New York- Gimme Shelter) of Meredith Hunter-- based Janine Antoni, Superflex (a who remembers his name?--a young Danish artist collective) and the black man killed by Hell's Angels Portuguese artist Miguel Palma. equipment from sea to land and vice "security" guards at the Rolling Palma's stylized version of a Higgins versa, Palma told reporters, he con- landing craft filled the siders the Higgins a rescue vessel. cavernous main room, One could see it as another updated where a hydraulically ark. created wave regularly The rambling Charles J. Colton washed over the boat School on St. Claude Avenue, a for- in a simulated sea mer middle school closed after surge. The Higgins Katrina--one chalkboard has a home- boat, conceived and work assignment dated 08.26.2005, built in great numbers the Friday before Katrina struck-- in New Orleans, was housed works by Cai Guo-Qiang, used extensively in Tatsuo Miyajima and Jose World War II. Because Damasceno as well as studios and it was designed to workshops for collaborations, still transfer soldiers and ongoing, between New Orleans artists and stu- dents. Colton plans to reopen in 2010 as a high school. At the massive, partially con- structed Louisiana ArtWorks, a resident artists' facility slated for completion in 2009, biennial artists included Spain's Perejaume as well as New York-based Venezuelan artist Arturo Herrera, who painted antecedents. New York-based video and performance artist Kalup Linzy, having delivered two electrifying bien- nial-opening vocal performances at Sweet Lorraine's, a well-known jazz club, was represented at NOMA by a kitschy, riveting send-up of a soap opera, Keys to Our Hearts (2008), a retro black-and-white video about race, gender and love's twists and turns. The Old U.S. Mint's 12 installations were particularly satisfying. South African artist Zwelethu Mthethwa's large format, beautifully composed photographs from his ongoing "Common Ground" series depict the poverty of both Cape Town and New Orleans, with one location indistin- guishable from the other. New York- based Sanford Biggers's Blossom (2007), a grand player piano pierced by a tree, tinkles out a version of Billie Holiday's signature ballad "Strange Fruit." In Corsica-born, New York- based Anne Deleporte's luminously blue-vaulted room, the color had been painted over newspapers in which pictures, often of artworks, tiny in relationship to the scale of the room, were left exposed. Louisiana artist Stephen G. Rhodes's timely, extravagantly disheveled multimedium an enormous exterior mural showing Shirin Neshat, shown at the installation conjured a post-election two bent, elongated loops. Newcomb Art Gallery of Tulane campaign headquarters, satirizing The New Orleans Center for Creative University. The works are part of her presidential politics and Disney Arts, a magnet high school, offered series "Women without Men," based World's Hall of Presidents. Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov's on the Shahrnush Parsipur novel, At the Contemporary Arts Center, classroom installation, a multimedia banned in Iran, with its linked narra- Louisiana artist Shawne Major shaggy-dog story with an unwieldy tives championing women. showed palatially scaled, sumptuous- title and much handwritten text scrib- AT THE MUSEUMS ly patterned, obsessively figured wall bled on the walls. A Recent Story with The New Orleans Museum of Art pre- hangings that are influenced by the Ghosts, a Pair of High-Heeled Shoes, sented several standout artists, region's traditional arts. Referencing (a couple of floods) and Some Other including Victor Harris, founder and the elaborate suits of Victor Harris, Mischievous Acts (2008) relates the Big Chief of the FiYi-Yi, a tribe of the metallic weavings of El Anatsui, fateful clash between two 13th-centu- Mardi Gras Indians, who created the plate paintings of Julian Schnabel ry rulers, one Bulgarian and one from unique, dazzlingly colored, intricately and the Haitian-influenced beadings Constantinople, whose angry ghosts patterned Mardi Gras suits and of fellow Louisianan Tina Girouard, cause both Katrina and a flood in masks--replete with feathers, beads, Major transforms her tapestries' Bulgaria. Also heavy on story were sequins and rhinestones--that pay cheap, mass-produced decorations, four ravishing videos from 2004-08 by homage to the regalia's African small toys and other gewgaws into dazzling elements of art. Amsterdam-based Fiona Tan's slow, thoughtful video, Island (2008), about the vulnerability of the low-lying Netherlands, is an austerely beautiful reminder of that country's physical kinship with New Orleans. London- based Isaac Julien was represented by his widely exhibited video Baltimore, 2003 [see A.i.A., Mar. '04], although the more daring Paradise Omeros, 2002 (probing bias against immigrants and gays), might have been a better choice. German-born, New York-based Josephine Meckseper showed her curiously appealing, homemade-looking docu- New Orleans-based Jackie Sumell his dream house, its swimming pool mentary video March for Peace, and New Orleans-born Herman graced by a lithe black panther Justice and Democracy, 04/29/06, Wallace's special collaboration began blocked out in tile. New Orleans- NYC (2006), filled with anti-Iraq-War with a question Sumell asked Wallace based sculptor Skylar Fein's protestors reminiscent of Vietnam-era in a 2002 letter: "What kind of a Remember the UpStairs Lounge marchers. house does a man who lives in a 6- (2008) was a sobering re-creation of a foot-by-9-foot cell for gay bar believed to have been delib- over 30 years dream erately set on fire in 1973, killing half of?" Wallace, a Black of the customers. One might ask Panther, answered from whether these--and several other Angola, the Louisiana projects in "Prospect.1"--meet a strict State Penitentiary, definition of art, but they are certainly where he has been germane to the racism and homopho- confined--many think bia that continue to plague New unjustly--for the past Orleans and many other locales. On a 34 years. The resulting more positive, even exhilarating note, multi-medium project South African-born, Berlin-based comprises a replica of Candice Breitz set up a lively wall of his cell and a model of 30 monitors, each with a Jamaican happily singing--against a royal blue backdrop--songs from Bob Marley's Legend album. SATELLITE EVENTS What would a biennial be without ancillary shows? "Prospect.1" spawned many, including two exhibi- tions at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. One was a macabre but compelling series of photographs by Lexington, Va.-based Sally Mann, focusing on the decomposition of ani- mal and human remains in nature. Meanwhile, New Orleans-born, New York-based Margaret Evangeline upped the wattage of a mini-retro-

spective with several beguiling new KK Projects houses. "Prospect.1" remains hard to fault. abstractions done in glitter paint. Another area house accommodated Did this place-sensitive combination Sally Heller, a New Orleans artist, was Mel Chin's "Operation Paydirt," an of art and altruism, ardor and context, part of an outdoor sculpture show on ongoing venture that helps support signal a curatorial paradigm shift? Convention Center Boulevard, spon- the rebuilding of New Orleans from Might biennials become WPAs for a sored by the Joan Mitchell the ground up by sealing lead and new century, a new community-ori- Foundation. Heller's Scraphouse other contaminants in the soil. Chin ented era? Could they harbinger (2008), an artificial tree with a house (based in North Carolina) turned the change we can believe in? caught in its branches, utilized a house into a vault, its entrance fitted "Prospect. 1 New Orleans" was on patchwork of drum barrels and with a semblance of a giant circular view at 28 venues with performances boards taken from old shotgun hous- safe door. The structure is papered and itinerant shows at three additional es to recall the logic-defying hybrids inside with thousands of "fundreds," sites in New Orleans, Nov. 1, 200- created by the storm (cars under facsimile $100 bills drawn by New Jan. 18. 2009. houses, boats in trees). Local galleries Orleans schoolchildren and visitors. LILLY WEI is a New York based writer such as Jonathan Ferrara, Heriard- The bills will ultimately be collected and independent curator. Cimino and Arthur Roger, all on Julia by a Brinks truck and brought to Street, opened shows by gallery Washington, D.C., where they will be artists to coincide with the biennial's presented to Congress in an effort to launch. In addition, Arthur Roger's exchange the fake money for real. project space was devoted to a group Chin is hoping to raise $300 million exhibition called "Katrina: this go-round, the estimated cost for Catastrophe and Catharsis." treating approximately 86,000 New The St. Claude and St. Roch area Orleans properties with perilously welcomed several alternative initia- high lead readings in their soil. tives, including one from KK Projects, "Prospect.1" was itself an artful pub- named for Kirsha Kaechele, its lic-service event, deftly skirting the founder, and widely considered to be sentimentality that sometimes threat- the most exciting gallery in New ened to swamp it. Nothing, of course, Orleans for its all-night events and is perfect. Why, for example, weren't smartly chosen exhibitions. Kaechele prominent Louisianans such as Keith acquired several dilapidated shotgun Sonnier and Lynda Benglis included? houses along North Villere Street and Cameron responded to an e-mail has opened them up for site-specific query about the number of local par- installations and architectural inter- ticipants by observing that of the 81 ventions by local and international artists, not only were 10 (nine living artists. A new video work by New and one deceased) long-term York's Tony Oursler, featuring New Louisiana residents but another two Orleans inhabitants chanting, rapping were raised there, two more studied and playing a harp, could be viewed in the state and several others had through small peepholes drilled into strong local ties before "Prospect.1," the wall of a derelict store. Peter such as Portuguese-born Francis Nadin, also from New York, placed his Cape, who helped physically salvage ceramic sculptures in a shallow 220- the U.S. Mint's collection (where his gallon pool of dark honey. New work was shown during the biennial). Orleans sculptor and designer Robert Cameron added that, while he Tannen was responsible for a garden thought the percentage was standard, in which various weeds and toxic he is committed to increasing their plants were lovingly encouraged to numbers for "Prospect.2." grow, and Dawn DeDeaux, also of Dedicated to the belief that art can New Orleans, installed an evocative make a difference and seems to have broken-glass floor piece in one of the already done so in individual ways,