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Prospect.4 The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp

Various venues, New Orleans 18 November – 25 February

The title of the latest edition of Prospect New At the New Orleans Jazz Museum you may at the Historic New Orleans Collection docu-
Orleans, the citywide triennial founded in 2008 also experience Mardi Gras Indian costumes ments the United Houma Nation, a tribe
in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, is The Lotus from Darryl Montana, a centuries-old tradition located in southern Louisiana, and of which
in Spite of the Swamp. Yes, that’s right, The Lotus that melds black and Native American tradi- Verdin is a member. Mark Dion deliberately
in Spite of the Swamp. Seventeen venues house the tions in the postcolonial South; you’ll also positioned Field Station for the Melancholy Biologist
exhibition’s 73 participating artists, duos and discover collages by famed jazz pioneer Louis (2017) within the flood zone so that it will be
collectives, though the city’s three art museums Armstrong, including one dedicated to his destroyed when the river rises in winter. For
hold a massive majority share. Apparently based devotion for a certain brand of natural laxative. now, the clapboard shed houses a tiny field-lab
on a poetic quote from musician and educator Biennials are great at cherry-picking, though full of scientific instruments and animal
Archie Shepp about the origins of jazz, the Prospect.4 lacks the self-awareness that allowed specimens, but it will be funny when the water
exhibition’s didactics tag on enough generic previous iterations to really pinpoint their releases everything from its current state
references to Buddhism, Hinduism and stakes. ‘I am a tourism promoter,’ the curator of captivity, including the contents of a cabinet
other ideas about art and rebirth to make one of the first Prospect, Dan Cameron, was quoted Dion filled entirely with aspirin.
wonder whether the artistic director, Trevor as saying in The New Yorker. I would appreciate The total lack of compunction on the part
Schoonmaker, and his team would have offered it if Schoonmaker, and biennial leadership, of a single rogue dancer (whoever it was in that
such a tepid metaphor about renewal in the would explain why they felt it was appropriate Lycra bodysuit, they were feeling themselves)
wake of Hurricane Katrina. And if not then, to install Genevieve Gaignard’s Grassroots provided many of us with the strongest memory
why exactly do audiences deserve it now? (2017) at the Ace Hotel. An exhibition sponsor, from the Swamp Galaxy Gala, an inaugural
However, Prospect.4 does seem to predict the the boutique hotel chain is known for a event for Prospect.4. Though the crowd’s phone
current mainstream debate surrounding public bespoke comfort – the eye they train on every cameras were trained elsewhere, it was actually
monuments. Indeed, in that regard it appears aesthetic decision is guided by an effort to the city’s mayor who would unwittingly set
to have followed the lead of New Orleans Mayor pass as local. Though Gaignard’s installation out the stakes of this edition of the triennial.
Mitch Landrieu, who spearheaded the removal uses church pews, vintage mirrors and Earlier editions of Prospect made urgent the
of several confederate statues in May 2017. patterned wallpaper, things you’d already larger concerns of the city, and artists notably
“The South lost,” he declared several times. expect to find at an Ace Hotel, it is disturbing tailored their contributions to also include
“Its cause was immoral.” Redressing these just how easily a series of slave ship manifests financial support and other community-based
art-historical legacies, certain works can could decorate the lobby, too. resources; that biennials are strategic assets
be plucked out as exemplary. Hank Willis Prospect.4 is an exhibition in spite of the (and Prospect’s website states this very clearly)
Thomas’s History of the Conquest (2017), a statue curator. Some of the most beguiling work was is a trap that curators of this edition succumbed
of a young black girl riding a close-to-two- captivated by the flood cycles of the Mississippi to, clearly unwilling to needle the rampant
metre-tall snail, appears to resemble some Delta itself. At UNO – St Claude Gallery, real-estate market and a growing housing
queer local folklore; and Rebecca Belmore’s photographer Jeff Whetstone’s series Batture crisis. Who knows what went through Mayor
Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Ritual (2017) is named after the in-between Landrieu’s mind as he delivered his last Prospect
Mother (1991), a massive megaphone handmade zone at river’s edge. The images show people, commencement. The opening of the exhibition
from wood and hide, prompts connections fish and tankers as they make their way up coincided with the mayoral election, and the
between indigenous tradition, monumentality the Mississippi, locals taking evening recreation, city would determine his successor; local
and protest. It is worth consuming a large others bathing; many of the images were shot newspapers displayed pull quotes from leading
portion of an afternoon to chase the many at dusk and dawn, though the video of the same candidates declaring their intention to stand
colourful flags Odili Donald Odita designed name shows the liminal area at all times of day. up to developers. TV appearances, TED Talks,
to commemorate important sites in local black One image depicts a dead catfish that gleams and participation at the Aspen Institute
history for Indivisible and Invincible: Monuments all over with jewellike flies: the lucid light incubator have by now made Landrieu a pundit,
to Black Liberation and Celebration in the City of invokes Dutch still-life paintings from a bygone and a New York Times editorial even named him
New Orleans (2017). Still, the exhibition previ- age of prosperity. The batture, which succumbs a potential democratic presidential nominee.
ously known to put art at the service of the to seasonal flooding, is a reminder of the flood The greatest innovation is happening at
city’s demands cordons this conversation off risk that pervades New Orleans, a city positioned the local level, Landrieu says, often to preface
to institutional spaces or depends too heavily below sea level; according to NPR, though, his vision of bipartisan compromise during
on international biennial stalwarts like Larry New Orleans successfully lobbied the federal any of his national speaking gigs. Tonight,
Achiampong, Kader Attia, Paulo Nazareth and government to remove emergency flood ratings though, he was far less convincing. “We’ve
Yoko Ono. Is Runo Lagomarsino’s eponymous that had prevented real-estate investment built schools, hospitals, parks,” he outlined
riverside mural If You Don’t Know What the South in areas that had been most affected by Katrina. towards the end of his gala speech, “to which
Is, It’s Simply Because You’re from the North (2017) In Monique Verdin’s photographs, the batture Prospect has added considerable value.”
really so provocative? is positioned as a site of disappearance: her show I bet it did. Sam Korman

facing page, top Louis Armstrong, Gems from Buenos, 1960, reel-to-reel facing page, bottom Jeff Whetstone, Ode to the Algiers Batture, from
tape box collage containing photographs and tape, 18 × 18 cm. the series Batture Ritual, 2017, archival pigment print, 99 × 132 cm.
Courtesy the Louis Armstrong House Museum, New York Courtesy the artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York

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