UNO Downtown Gallery
presents
Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans
An Immersive Solo Exhibition of Mixed Media Drawings by José Torres-Tama
Opens: Saturday, September 8 through October 7, 2018
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.
With a style akin to German and Latin American Expressionism, I'm looking to render the enduring humanity of a people
who have been dehumanized for political gain. We are all Americans in the Hemispheric Americas. --El JTT
presents
Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans
An Immersive Solo Exhibition of Mixed Media Drawings by José Torres-Tama
Opens: Saturday, September 8 through October 7, 2018
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.
With a style akin to German and Latin American Expressionism, I'm looking to render the enduring humanity of a people
who have been dehumanized for political gain. We are all Americans in the Hemispheric Americas. --El JTT
In this Tricentennial 2018, the most neglected story remains 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 Downtown Gallery will be transformed into a sacred space for the installation of drawings 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 Downtown Gallery Solo Exhibition: Opening Saturday, September 8, 2018 from 6pm - 9pm
Exhibit runs through October 7, 2018
2429 Saint Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117
504.280.6493
Supported by the Platforms Fund
Collaborating Artists:
For the opening event, Roberto Carrillo will offer a live intermittent 12-minute music performance once every 45 minutes, and play an Andean-music soundscape that reminds us that the reconstruction workers of New Orleans are descendants of Aztecs, Maya, Zapotecs, and other indigenous people of the Hemispheric Americas. These music compositions will offer a magical live audio element to enhance the sacred space of the installation of drawings.
Tshombe Tshanti is the film artist creating the accompanying film video for the exhibition, and he will edit public protest footage that José Torres-Tam has shot during the past ten years of documenting the demonstrations of the Congress of Day Laborers. He will document the exhibition opening as well.