"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.