The University of New Orleans (UNO) Saint Claude Gallery
Presents
Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans
Solo Exhibition of Mixed Media Works on Paper by José Torres-Tama
2429 Saint Claude Avenue
September 8 through October 7, 2018
Presents
Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans
Solo Exhibition of Mixed Media Works on Paper by José Torres-Tama
2429 Saint Claude Avenue
September 8 through October 7, 2018
Tragically, the 2018 Tricentennial celebrations of New Orleans deported our Latin American immigrant community from their books and festivities. City elders and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH), which published the official three-hundred year anthology, brutally disappeared an immigrant community that has contributed their sweat, labor, and love to our reconstruction in the near 14 years post-Katrina.
The LEH rendered us invisible in their myopic version of history--as if we did not even exist! When privileged Eurocentric gatekeepers wield such power to decide who will be remembered and who will be forgotten in historical chronicles of our cities, it's a cultural crime when they deport the most vulnerable contributors.
In the Latin American tradition, it's the job of the artist to remember and speak the people's truth against the "official lies." This exhibit is a creative response to honor our Latin American immigrant community that has contributed to the rebirth of a city once on it's post-Katrina deathbed. --El JTT
On Saturday, September 2018, an estimated three hundred people attended the opening of Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans, and visitors experienced a body of works on paper and photo assemblages that honored the immense contribution Latin American immigrants have made to our city's recovery.
The most neglected story of the 2018 Tricentennial is that immigrants resurrected New Orleans from critical condition after the great flood, and the UNO Saint Claude Gallery presented an installation of figurative works that remember a heroic Latin American people, who are descendants of Aztecs, Mayas, Zapotecs, and other indigenous people of the Hemispheric Americas.
This immersive exhibition challenged the deportation of “BROWN” people in the Tricentennial programs, and the official anthology titled New Orleans & the World. During an era of raging anti-immigrant hysteria, its beyond shameful when such an organization with "humanities" in their moniker engages in the most inhumane act by disappearing an immigrant community that has aided our literal rebirth and rebuilding.
Most of these drawings are inspired by the many photographs of pubic protests I have taken of the Congress of Day Laborers / El Congreso de Jornaleros, the immigrant activist group that has worked vigilantly to bring attention to the injustices suffered by a community that has done all the heavy lifting of an epic recovery.
The exhibition title expresses the irony experienced by an immigrant community that has contributed to the rebirth of a "Big Easy" city, but continues to be neglected while enduring a myriad of human rights violations, from wage theft at the hands of ruthless contractors to brutal deportations breaking up local families.
Five years in the making, these drawings are rendered in charcoal, pastels and conté on Arches paper, and the dramatic figurative compositions echo the influences of German and Mexican expressionist artists from Max Beckman to the figurative paintings of José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Also, they resound with political overtones found in British artist Sue Coe’s images, and the surreal figurative work of the contemporary Cuban José Bedia.
My aim is to create pictorial narratives that document the epic struggles of immigrants during a time of persecution. Latin American immigrants have been a big part of the rebirth of New Orleans, but they face a clear and present danger with a hostile administration in the White House--as they struggle to remain in a city they have helped to rebuild.
The workers and families who helped rebuild New Orleans live in terror today … If they leave their homes to walk their children to school, if they go to the laundromat or the barber shop or the grocery store, they will be targeted for nothing more than looking Latino, and their families might never see them again. --Bill Quigley, Professor of Law Loyola University
(from "Why I stand with immigrant workers who rebuilt New Orleans." nola.com Editorial 2013)
Professor Bill Quigley is a long-time supporter of the Congress of Day Laborers, and this quote of his blazoned the gallery walls,
A battery-operated moving second-hand clock is placed at various points of some compositions, and such mixed media elements push these drawings beyond being static images. The moving second-hand symbolizes the beating heart of immigrants working in the shadows, and their tenuous position because their time may be up at any second.
The drawings are mounted on wood panels used as reconstruction materials, and magnet letters spell out various statements that include "Stop the Raids" and "No Human Is Illegal". Magnet letters often used as playful word decor on home refrigerators now express the political urgency of the moment such as "We Are Human", and it echoes the cries of the Civil Rights movement, "I Am A Man".
UNO Saint Gallery Solo Exhibition: Opened Saturday, September 8, 2018
Exhibit ran through October 7, 2018
2429 Saint Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117
Funded in part by the 2018 Platforms Fund & a Jazz & Heritage Festival Community Documentary Grant
This series was initially developed with the support of Space One Eleven in Birmingham, AL
in April 2013, and supported by a Visual Arts Network (VAN) Residency.
Press Links: WWNO INSIDE THE ARTS with Diane Mack
The Advocate Arts Article: Hard Living in the Big Easy:
Show honors Latino immigrant workers' contributions to New Orleans
Collaborating Artists:
For the opening event, Roberto Carrillo offered a live intermittent 12-minute music performance once every 45 minutes, and played an Andean-music soundscape to remind us that the reconstruction workers of New Orleans are descendants of Aztecs, Maya, Zapotecs, and other indigenous people of the Hemispheric Americas.
Tshombe Tshanti filmed and edited the video installation on display that documented the development of these works on paper.
Photo Images of the exhibition below are made possible by Victoria Garnett.