Announces Artists for its Inaugural Biennial
and Highlights of Works to be Presented
November 1, 2008 – January 18, 2009
Additional Venues Announced
Dan Cameron, Director and Curator of Prospect.1 New Orleans, announced today the names of the 81 local, national, and international artists selected to participate in the inaugural edition of the biennial, on view November 1, 2008, through January 18, 2009. Hailing from 36 countries and five continents, many of these artists are creating new and original works that respond both to the locations in which they will be installed and to the city of New Orleans as a whole, for the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States.
Selected artists (in alphabetical order)
ALLORA & CALZADILLA, GHADA AMER, EL ANATSUI, JANINE ANTONI, ALEXANDRE ARRECHEA, LUIS CRUZ AZACETA, JOHN BARNES, JR., SANFORD BIGGERS, WILLIE BIRCH MONICA BONVICINI, MARK BRADFORD, CANDICE BREITZ, CAI GUO-QIANG, CAO FEI, FRANCIS CAPE, CHEN CHIEH-JEN, ADAM CVIJANOVIC, JOSE DAMASCENO, ANNE DELEPORTE, LEANDRO ERLICH, SKYLAR FEIN, ROY FERDINAND, JR., TONY FITZPATRICK, GAJIN FUJITA, RICO GATSON, KATHARINA GROSSE, TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, VICTOR HARRIS & FI YI YI, ARTURO HERRERA, JACQUELINE HUMPHRIES, ISAAC JULIEN, WILLIAM KENTRIDGE, LEE BUL, KALUP LINZY, SRDJAN LONCAR, RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER, DEBORAH LUSTER, JORGE MACCHI, SHAWNE MAJOR, NALINI MALANI, McCALLUM & TARRY, DAVE MCKENZIE, JOSEPHINE MECKSEPER, JULIE MEHRETU, AERNOUT MIK, BEATRIZ MILHAZES, TATSUO MIYAJIMA, YASUMASA MORIMURA, ZWELETHU MTHETHWA, WANGECHI MUTU, SHIRIN NESHAT, MARCEL ODENBACH, KAZ OSHIRO, MIGUEL PALMA, PEREJAUME, PIERRE ET GILLES, JOHN PILSON, SEBASTIÁN PREECE, NAVIN RAWANCHAIKUL, ROSÂNGELA RENNÓ, PEDRO REYES, ROBIN RHODE, STEPHEN G. RHODES, NADINE ROBINSON, CLARE E. ROJAS, KAY ROSEN, MALICK SIDIBÉ, AMY SILLMAN, NEDKO SOLAKOV, MONIKA SOSNOWSKA, JACKIE SUMELL and HERMAN WALLACE, SUPERFLEX, FIONA TAN, PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU, FRED TOMASELLI, JANNIS VARELAS, XAVIER VEILHAN, PAUL VILLINSKI, , NARI WARD, XU BING, HAEGUE YANG
Highlights of the Biennial
A number of biennial highlights respond to the destruction wrought on the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Region in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. Mark Bradford will create a wooden Ark utilizing the shell of a destroyed house and other discarded scraps of wood in the Lower Ninth Ward. Paul Villinski, a New York-based artist known for creating work from debris who has said he found “new, urgent purpose in the disaster of Hurricane Katrina,” will create his Emergency Response Studio, a “green”-powered mobile artist’s studio, out of a discarded, now-iconic FEMA trailer. South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa, who first visited New Orleans in the more immediate wake of the hurricane, returned to the Lower Ninth Ward in late 2007 to create his first photographs outside of Africa, which will debut at Prospect.1.
Highlights of the biennial also include works by artists who have selected unique locations in which to install work. Adam Cuijanovic will paint one of his murals inside an abandoned house in the Lower Ninth Ward, and Nari Ward will convert an abandoned church in the Lower Ninth Ward into an installation. Kay Rosen will transform city billboards and benches into enigmatic word-puzzles. Navin Rawanchaikul will present his New Orleans I Love Taxi Project, similar to one created in New York in 2001 with the Public Art Fund. In New Orleans, he will interview taxi drivers and weave their tales into a comic book story that he will produce and print, then distribute in city taxis during the biennial.
A number of New Orleans-born and based artists have also been selected to participate in the biennial, among them Shawne Major, who is creating three large-scale wall hangings; Willie Birch, who will present a new series of drawings; and Croatian-born, New Orleans-based sculptor Srdjan Loncar, who will erect a sculptural pile of money in front of the Old U.S. Mint and encourage the public to carry some of it away in briefcases provided at the site.
Participating Venues
Previously Announced: Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, The Historic New Orleans Collection, L9 Center for the Arts, Louisiana Artworks, The Old U.S. Mint Louisiana State Museum, The National World War II Museum, New Orleans African American Museum, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts|Riverfront, New Orleans Museum of Art, Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
New Venues: Ashé Cultural Arts Center, The George & Leah McKenna Museum of African American Art, and Longue Vue House & Gardens.
Funding
This exhibition has been made possible with the support of Prospect.1 New Orleans Founding Benefactor Toby Devan Lewis; U.S. Biennial, Inc. Board of Directors; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.; and the Prospect.1 Kingfishers Leadership Committee.
U.S. Biennial, Inc., the nonprofit organizer of Prospect.1, continues active outreach for funds to underwrite the exhibition. To make a donation, please visit www.prospectneworleans.org
About Prospect.1 New Orleans:
Dan Cameron conceived Prospect.1 New Orleans to reinvigorate the city, a historic regional artistic center, following the human, civic, and economic devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The primary goal of the biennial exhibition is to redevelop the city as a cultural destination where the visual arts are celebrated and can once again thrive. New Orleans was the first U.S. city to host a recurring international art exhibition, beginning in 1887 with the Exhibition of the Art Association of New Orleans. In this tradition, Prospect.1 will provide the public with work by 81 artists conceived and developed for the city. The largest international art biennial ever held in the United States, Prospect.1 will reach an estimated audience of 100,000 visitors, half of whom will likely be Louisiana state residents.
For more information on Prospect.1 New Orleans, please visit www.prospectneworleans.org or contact U.S. Biennial, Inc. at (212) 686-5305 or info@prospectneworleans.org .
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