Prospect.2 New Orleans opens October 22, 2011
The Second Edition of the International Contemporary Art Biennial
Presenting 27 International and Local Artists
Throughout New Orleans and Lafayette, LA
Biennial Preview Days: October 20–21, 2011
Public Dates: October 22, 2011–January 29, 2012
Dan Cameron, Artistic Director
Prospect.2 New Orleans, the second edition of the international contemporary art biennial, opens to the public on October 22, 2011 and will be on view through January 29, 2012. Curated by Artistic Director, Dan Cameron, Prospect.2 features 27 local, national, and international artists from a variety of artistic and cultural backgrounds, and a total of nine different countries, including the United States, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Japan, Chile, Iceland and Vietnam.“To celebrate the opening of Prospect.2, we have several amazing performances and events lined up that embody the spirit of New Orleans and the vibrancy of the city’s culture,” says Dan Cameron. “With Prospect.2 we look forward to once again bringing the New Orleans art community into the spotlight, and drawing the art world’s creative energy to the gulf region.”
Highlights of the Biennial
Prospect.2 opens to the public with a series of festivities including three special performances by participating artists. R. Luke DuBois, a new media artist and composer, is presenting The Marigny Parade, a public performance and music piece. The Marigny Parade is taking place around the Marigny Triangle in New Orleans and features nearly 350 musicians from three renowned New Orleans high school and middle school marching bands. The performance will be followed by the Prospect.2 ribbon-cutting ceremony that officially opens the biennial.
Performance artist and sculptor William Pope.L, is presenting a performance and video installation entitled Blink. For the work, the artist asked New Orleans residents to donate photos in response to the questions: “When you dream of New Orleans, what do you dream of? // When you wake up in the morning, what do you see?” These donated images will be part of a video installation mounted on a truck—a modern, travelling version of a “magic lantern” projection—that will traverse the city of New Orleans from sundown on October 22, 2011 through sunrise the following day.
Baltimore-based artist, Joyce J. Scott is also presenting a performance entitled, Miss Veronica’s Veil, on October 22, at 4pm in Café Istanbul at the New Orleans Healing Center. The performance, presented together with 2 singers, a tuba player and a guitarist, alternates between songs, spoken word, and actions, telling the tale of Miss V, a contemporary manifestation of Saint Veronica, who is frustrated by the reoccurring events of history—especially the chasm between men and women.
Among the internationally renowned artists participating in the biennial is Sophie Calle, who is presenting a new iteration of her long-term project, True Stories. For Prospect.2, the project has been reimagined as a site-specific installation that will employ Calle’s signature blending of reality and fiction. In the work, she weaves her personal narrative into the history of the 1850 House of the Louisiana State Museum, one of the apartments in the famous Pontalba Apartments in Jackson Square in New Orleans.
Memphis-based photographer and filmmaker William Eggleston, presents an exhibition of rarely shown works, including a black and white photographic series entitled Nightclub Portraits, and a continuous screening of his film Stranded in Canton, which has been described as an intimate and gritty view of Memphis. Eggleston’s works are on view at the Old U.S. Mint, Louisiana State Museum.
Sculptor and filmmaker Francesco Vezzoli, presents a site-specific, sculptural installation entitled, Portrait of Sophia Loren as the Muse of Antiquity (After Giorgio de Chirico), at the Piazza d’Italia, a landmark of early post-modernist architecture designed in the late 1970s by Charles Moore, and restored in 2004. The installation features a statue of the actress done in an exaggerated surrealistic style, with a red carpet leading from the ground level, to the upper stairwell.
Several artists participating in Prospect.2 are presenting works that embody the spirit of New Orleans, and have been specifically created for the biennial and the city. Alexis Rockman and An-My Lê present works that consider the geographical location of New Orleans and the environmental and political issues facing the region and its inhabitants. Rockman presents a mural-scale painting imagining a war between species indigenous to the Louisiana bayou and those that have been introduced to the bayou ecosystem within the past 500 years. Vietnamese photographer An-My Lê presents a new series of photographs based on her investigations into the lives of Vietnamese nationals who have migrated to southern Louisiana throughout the past 25 years.
Highlights of the biennial also include work from artists who currently live and work in New Orleans. Among these artists are Dan Tague, who is presenting a new installation entitled The U.S. Dept. of Civil Disobedience; Dawn DeDeaux, who has created a large-scale multimedia installation work entitled Goddess Fortuna And Her Dunces In An Effort To Make Sense Of It All; and Bruce Davenport Jr., who is presenting some of his most ambitious drawings to date, including a series of large-scale works which express the unique richness of marching bands as a dominant force in the local arts culture.
Exhibiting Artists:
Sophie Calle; Nick Cave Jonas Dahlberg; Bruce Davenport Jr; Dawn DeDeaux; R. Luke DuBois; George Dunbar; Keith Duncan; William Eggleston; Nicole Eisenman; Karl Haendel; Ragnar Kjartansson; William Pope.L; An-My Lê; Ivan Navarro; Lorraine O’Grady; Tsuyoshi Ozawa; Gina Phillips; Ashton T. Ramsey; Alexis Rockman; Joyce J. Scott; Jennifer Steinkamp; Dan Tague; Robert Tannen; Grazia Toderi; Francesco Vezzoli; and Paweł Wojtasik.
About Prospect New Orleans:
Founded in 2008 by Dan Cameron, Prospect New Orleans is one of the leading biennials of international contemporary art in the United States. Conceived in the tradition of the great international biennials, such as the Venice Biennale and the Bienal de São Paulo, Prospect New Orleans showcases new artistic practices from around the world in settings that are both historic and culturally exceptional, and contributes to the cultural economy of New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf region by spurring cultural tourism and bringing international attention to the area’s vibrant visual arts community.
Prospect New Orleans is founded on the principle that art engenders social progress. It is organized by U.S. Biennial, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit art organization that launched in January 2007 in order to realize Prospect.1
Funding Organizations and Donors
Prospect.2 New Orleans has been made possible with the support of Founding Benefactor Toby Devan Lewis.
Leadership support has been provided by the Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation; The Metabolic Studio; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston; The Prospectors Club; and The Helis Foundation.
Additional support has been provided by Susan and Ralph Brennan; the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation; Bloomberg; Whitney Bank; Regions Bank; Friends of the Stuart Collection, UC San Diego; Asian Cultural Council; Mr. and Mrs. Richard Cahn; Étant donnés: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art; Adam J. Lewis Trust; Heymann Fund; Peter B. Lewis, Michele Reynoir and Kevin Clifford; the Japan Foundation; Downtown Development District; William A. Fagaly; Sarah Harte; Sanford Heller; JDL Foundation; Pamela Joseph and Robert Brinker; Jones Walker; Jeanne and Michael L. Klein; Martha Claire Tompkins; New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau; Iberiabank; the Elmore Morgan Jr. Visual Arts Endowment; New Orleans Arts District; and Turon Travel, among others.
Special thanks to Hyatt Regency New Orleans, Hospitality Sponsor.
For more information on Prospect.2 New Orleans, please visit
www.prospectneworleans.org or contact U.S. Biennial, Inc. at +1 (212) 680-5305 or info@prospectneworleans.org.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Elizabeth Reina-Longoria or Deirdre Maher
Blue Medium
Tel: +1 (212) 675-1800
Email: elizabeth@bluemedium.com or
deirdre@bluemedium.com
To download the full press kit for Prospect.2 New Orleans, please click here.
*Image above:
Benetton Collection, Treviso, Italy. Courtesy: Diego Cortez Arte Ltd., NYC.
