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Brian Nolan- photography
Frank Aymami – photography
Rontherin Ratliff – mixed media
Jan Gilbert, Debra Howell, and Krista Jurisich, – collaborative photo-based works.
VESTIGES/trinitas: September 1 – October 7, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 1, 2011, 4:30 – 6:30PM The Bryan Art Gallery, EHFA Rm. 128
There will be a Tea and Ethics lecture, “The Ethics of Disaster” at 5:30PM, presented by The VESTIGES Project Co-founder and Director of VESTIGES: THINK TANK, Jan Gilbert. Gallery talk with artists directly following Tea and Ethics lecture.
After the floods post-Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, many artists were unable to return to the area. “Trinitas” brings together displaced New Orleans artists with members of their former community both presenting individual works as well as a large-scale, wetlands-inspired wall installation assembled as the result of a call for submissions initiated and configured by Jan Gilbert and Debra Howell of The VESTIGES Project of New Orleans including the work of 50 artists. The overall response from participants, both those forced to relocate post-Katrina and those remaining in New Orleans, expresses relief in this opportunity to reflect upon the call for submissions seeking small baggies filled with the artistʼs own vestiges: traces of objects or items that are missed.
Michele White, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Tulane University and participant in VESTIGES Projects writes in her exhibition narrative titled Re: collecting Vestiges “in such installations, the trace acts as both an aesthetic and political process. It allows VESTIGES members to reference multiple pasts and to present the remaining parts of homes and lives so that they can be used to think about our social arrangements and city. While interactive exhibitions in which objects can be touched and rearranged may be familiar artistic strategies, their employment by VESTIGES members resonates in New Orleans where the aspects of daily life, home, business, government, and archive recently had to be, and in many cases still need to be, remade.”
“This exhibition is intended to gather participating artists for reflection, and discussion with our coastal community in celebration of hope, progress, and the importance of our communalities” says Rachel Harris-Beck, exhibitions coordinator for The Rebecca Randall Bryan Gallery. “We are proud to be involved in a project which will reunite communities, develop new perspectives, and explore progress made despite tragedy and moments of despair” she states.
The Vestiges Project is an ongoing collaborative of New Orleans artists and writers formed in 1984 in New Orleans that focuses on investigating the interconnection of image and text and producing works that transcend exclusively visual or verbal modes of communication and perception.
In addition, New Orleans native Jan Gilbert of The VESTIGES Project will present “The Ethics of Disaster” a lecture discussing how artists collaborate to produce work even after their community is destroyed and separated by disaster, hosted by The Jackson Center Tea and Ethics program. Additionally, all featured artists will be present during an opening reception on Thursday September 1, 2011 from 4:30p.m. until 6:30p.m, to discuss the processes that they use in their individual work.