The 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
COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS & CLOSING EVENT: SAT, OCT 6 from 3-5PM | FREE & Open to Public
2429 Saint Claude Avenue & Wine Reception to Follow
Exhibition runs through October 7, 2018
Community Activists Event will feature speakers such as Angela Kinlaw from the Peoples' Assembly, Michael "Quess" Moore from Take 'Em Down NOLA, Daniel Castellanos from National Guestworker Alliance, Laura Venegas from MetropoLatin Magazine, Roberto Carrillo from Mayahuel, and Marlon Torres from the Southern Poverty Law Center speaking to the criminalization of immigrants.
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
COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS & CLOSING EVENT: SAT, OCT 6 from 3-5PM | FREE & Open to Public
2429 Saint Claude Avenue & Wine Reception to Follow
Exhibition runs through October 7, 2018
Community Activists Event will feature speakers such as Angela Kinlaw from the Peoples' Assembly, Michael "Quess" Moore from Take 'Em Down NOLA, Daniel Castellanos from National Guestworker Alliance, Laura Venegas from MetropoLatin Magazine, Roberto Carrillo from Mayahuel, and Marlon Torres from the Southern Poverty Law Center speaking to the criminalization of immigrants.
Tragically, the 2018 Tricentennial celebrations of New Orleans have deported our Latin American immigrant community from their books and festivities. City elders have disappeared an immigrant community that has contributed their sweat, labor, and love to our reconstruction in the 13 years post-Katrina. This exhibit is a creative response to honor immigrants in a city with a strong Latin Legacy. --El JTT
The most neglected story of the 2018 Tricentennial is the immense contribution Latin American immigrants have made to our reconstruction post-Katrina. Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans offers an immersive exhibition of mixed media drawings to challenge this official deportation of “BROWN” people, during an era of anti-immigrant hysteria.
The UNO Saint Claude Gallery offers an installation of mixed media woks on paper that honor La Raza Cósmica, the Cosmic Race, because the Latin American immigrants here are descendants of Aztecs, Mayas, Zapotecs, and other indigenous people of the Hemispheric Americas.
I am a Mestizo hybrid of Spanish, German, and Quichua Native people, and a progeny of the Spanish Conquest of South America. I’m an Ecuadorian immigrant and descendant of the Quichua people who inhabit my birth country, and a multidisciplinary artist of color dedicated to social justice. 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 working fiercely to bring attention to the injustices suffered by a community that has aided the rebuilding of New Orleans.
The exhibition title expresses the irony experienced by an immigrant community that has contributed to the resurrection of a "Big Easy" city once on it's deathbed post-Katrina, 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 with brutal deportations to remain in a city they have helped to rebuild.
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" that echoes the cries of the Civil Rights movement "I Am A Man".
UNO Saint Gallery Solo Exhibition: Opened Saturday, September 8, 2018 with an estimated 30 visitors
Exhibit runs through October 7, 2018
2429 Saint Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117
504.280.6493
Funded in part by the 2018 Platforms Fund
& a Jazz & Heritage Festival Community Documentary Grant
Press Links: WWNO INSIDE THE ARTS with Diane Mack
The Advocate Arts Article
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 has filmed and edited the video installation on display, and it addresses the disappearance of our people in this 2018 Tricentennial with the brutal deportation of our immigrant community in the official 300 year anthology titled New Orleans & the World, The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities has published this book, and disappeared our immigrant community from their Eurocentric version of New Orleans' history. In their Renewal Post-Katrina chapter, we are no where to be found.
When an arts organization with "humanities" in their moniker makes such a brutal decision to exclude an immigrant people vital to the rebirth of this once deeply devastated port city, it is another example of the anti-immigrant hysteria gripping this country, where we are attacked and made invisible.
Our immigrant community and our long Latin legacy has been excluded from the LEH's Eurocentric account of history! It's the job of the artist to remember, and call out the official lies told by such cultural institutions that serve as hegemonic gatekeepers to decide who will be remembered and who shall be forgotten. Ashé y Adelante --JTT
The most neglected story of the 2018 Tricentennial is the immense contribution Latin American immigrants have made to our reconstruction post-Katrina. Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans offers an immersive exhibition of mixed media drawings to challenge this official deportation of “BROWN” people, during an era of anti-immigrant hysteria.
The UNO Saint Claude Gallery offers an installation of mixed media woks on paper that honor La Raza Cósmica, the Cosmic Race, because the Latin American immigrants here are descendants of Aztecs, Mayas, Zapotecs, and other indigenous people of the Hemispheric Americas.
I am a Mestizo hybrid of Spanish, German, and Quichua Native people, and a progeny of the Spanish Conquest of South America. I’m an Ecuadorian immigrant and descendant of the Quichua people who inhabit my birth country, and a multidisciplinary artist of color dedicated to social justice. 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 working fiercely to bring attention to the injustices suffered by a community that has aided the rebuilding of New Orleans.
The exhibition title expresses the irony experienced by an immigrant community that has contributed to the resurrection of a "Big Easy" city once on it's deathbed post-Katrina, 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 with brutal deportations to remain in a city they have helped to rebuild.
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" that echoes the cries of the Civil Rights movement "I Am A Man".
UNO Saint Gallery Solo Exhibition: Opened Saturday, September 8, 2018 with an estimated 30 visitors
Exhibit runs through October 7, 2018
2429 Saint Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117
504.280.6493
Funded in part by the 2018 Platforms Fund
& a Jazz & Heritage Festival Community Documentary Grant
Press Links: WWNO INSIDE THE ARTS with Diane Mack
The Advocate Arts Article
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 has filmed and edited the video installation on display, and it addresses the disappearance of our people in this 2018 Tricentennial with the brutal deportation of our immigrant community in the official 300 year anthology titled New Orleans & the World, The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities has published this book, and disappeared our immigrant community from their Eurocentric version of New Orleans' history. In their Renewal Post-Katrina chapter, we are no where to be found.
When an arts organization with "humanities" in their moniker makes such a brutal decision to exclude an immigrant people vital to the rebirth of this once deeply devastated port city, it is another example of the anti-immigrant hysteria gripping this country, where we are attacked and made invisible.
Our immigrant community and our long Latin legacy has been excluded from the LEH's Eurocentric account of history! It's the job of the artist to remember, and call out the official lies told by such cultural institutions that serve as hegemonic gatekeepers to decide who will be remembered and who shall be forgotten. Ashé y Adelante --JTT
Photo Images of the exhibition below are made possible by Victoria Garnett.