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 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 Latin American immigrants who have contributed their sweat, labor, and love to rebuilt and resurrect a city once on it's post-Katrina deathbed. --El JTT
On Saturday, September 2018, three hundred people were estimated at the opening for Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & the Rebirth of New Orleans in September 2018, and visitors experienced a body of works on paper and photo assemblages that honored the immense contribution Latin American immigrants have made to the reconstruction post-Katrina.
The most neglected story of the 2018 Tricentennial is that immigrants resurrected New Orleans from a critical state after the great flood, and the UNO Saint Claude Gallery presented an installation of figurative works that humanize 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 published by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities that has brutally disappeared Latin immigrants from their version of history in a celebrated book 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 Torres-Tama has 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 rebirth of a "Big Easy" city once near death thirteen-plus years ago, 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.
Torres-Tama aims 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
Exhibit ran 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
This series was initially developed with the support of Space One Eleven in Birmingham, AL
back 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
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 Euro-centric 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.