Prospect.4, the
latest iteration of Prospect New Orleans' international art
triennial, opens November 18th on the cusp of a very auspicious
event: the 300th anniversary of the city's founding. As befits
America's most culturally Creole city, it promises to be its most
exotic triennial art event in any number of ways. The title,
The
Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, sets the tone. Most of us know about
swamps, but the lotus flower evokes a whiff of mystery as an ancient
Hindu and Buddhist icon of enlightenment. Prospect.4's artistic
director, Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art curator Trevor
Schoonmaker, calls it “a beautiful bloom flourishing untainted
above the murky water” that he says is a fitting symbol for our
natural environment as well as for the resilience of our city, for
the way it reminds us that “redemption exists in ruin, and
creativity in destruction.” He also likes the way the great jazz
sax player Archie Shepp used it as a metaphor for the origins of jazz
itself as it evolved through slavery and African drumming on Congo
Square while absorbing European brass band extravagance and the "Cuban tinge"
that influenced generations of epochal New Orleans musicians from Jelly Roll Morton to
Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint. P.4 features
work by seventy-three artists from all over the world, presented in
seventeen venues across the city. Beyond art stars like Yoko
Ono and Kara Walker...
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