October 14 - November 5, 2023
Opening reception on Second Saturday, October 14, 6-10pm
with backyard installation by Flora Cabili.
*The Saint Claude Art Bus will be running this Second Saturday, departing Antenna Gallery at 6:30! More information here.
Gallery open hours are Saturdays and Sundays, 12-5pm.
Programming This Month:
Saturday, October 14, 2023
6-10pm
See Through by Flora Cabili
See Through, a solo, outdoor light-based installation explores the links between land extraction, materiality, movement, and permanence. See Through presents works that contemplate climate futures, especially in the Gulf South, by drawing from the memory of found or previously used materials – specifically petroleum byproducts – to investigate our collective relationship to the natural and built environment. What is our responsibility to the lands we inhabit? See Through’s focus material is styrofoam, or more accurately, Extracted Polystyrene (EPS) foam – one of our most fabricated, non-recyclable, non-disposable materials. Flora carves into the foam intricate patterns, hollowing the material so light floods through creating effects akin to stained glass. The patterns consist of shapes that imitate both the EPS foam’s air-filled balls compacted together, nature, and our most basic human parts – cells, DNA strands, organs. This installation offers viewers the opportunity to grapple with how we can (re)consider the nature of our materials, and the ways we manipulate nature.
Flora is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist, educator, and queer storyteller who uses public engagement, installations, movement, and mixed-media works to explore themes of origin, assembly and dislocation. She draws from found materials' memory to explore our collective relationship to the natural and built environment. Flora explores climate futures by drawing from the memory of found materials – specifically petroleum byproducts – to investigate our collective relationship to the natural and built environment. Through this exploration, they grapple with how we can collectively (re)consider the nature of the material and how we manipulate nature. How can we contemplate notions of space, permanence, and extraction? In the last two years, she completed residencies at the Aquarium Gallery and DEPART-MENT in New Orleans and Obracadabra in Oaxaca City, Mexico. Based here, she was born and raised in France and America. Flora traces their roots to France, Egypt, Greece, and Italy.
Saturday, October 21, 2023
4-6pm
Dream Portals:
A Surrealism workshop with Helen Peña
Through meditation, collage and automatic writing, Dream Portals is a workshop that centers our dreams as tools for divination and art-making.
Come dive into our collective subconscious, learn about surrealism and make some art along the way.
More info + Sign up here.
Saturday, October 28, 2023
5-11pm
5pm ARTIST TALK
featuring
Déja M. Jones, Blossoming Portals with Heavenly Petals
Rraine Hanson, SUBMERGED
Denisio Truitt, PRESSURE
6pm PERFORMANCE
DYANI in collaboration with SUBMERGED by Rraine Hanson
8-11pm HALLOWEEN ART + MUSIC BASH
a Front Fundraiser, featuring
DJ set by DYANI
Room 1
Déja M. Jones, Blossoming Portals with Heavenly Petals, Multimedia Installation, 2023.
Blossoming Portals with Heavenly Petals
Déja M. Jones
In New Orleans, there is an understanding that life on Earth is just one part of a greater journey. Prior to being born on Earth through a Mother Portal, a spirit exists to fulfill its purpose or "live out its script", as Jones' mother would say. Jones was raised to view life through the perspective of their Creole and Indigenous ancestors who understand life is fickle but your spirit will remain. This foundation leads to the question: why is healing so important? What does it really mean to heal? And how do you heal, what does it look like? "Blossoming Portals with Heavenly Petals" is a result of Jones' self-exploration of healing guided by the love, generosity, and wisdom of their mother and ancestors in the form of a multimedia installation including interviews, paintings, design, and storytelling.
Déja M. Jones is a New Orleans native and self-taught interdisciplinary artist with Black Indegenous Creole roots. Jones is passionate about bridging communities, cultures, objects, and governance through their art. Their installations and archival spaces are a reflection of their advocacy and community organizing efforts, featuring sculptures and paintings from their studio work. Jones draws inspiration from their upbringing in a community of spiritual healers, Black educators, and BIPOC legacy builders. Their mission is to bring people together through movements and create spaces that promote celebration, honor, healing, and revolution. As they share their own story and that of their people, Jones recognizes the common struggles, enemies, strengths, desires, and goals of disenfranchised communities worldwide. “We are a diverse, one people and that is where our power lies.”
Room 2
Rraine Hanson, Submerged: Afé, digital, 11 x 14 inches, 2023.
SUBMERGED
Rraine Hanson
SUBMERGED offers a glimpse into the future, when humans are so far gone in their destruction of the Earth that the water spirits have no choice but to intervene. Sea levels have risen so high that it only takes a few big tsunamis for them to reclaim the Earth. The waves begin in the Atlantic, right where the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea kiss, and the world as we know it now becomes submerged and almost entirely destroyed. Not many survive but there are some beings who do: among them is a group of Black, gender expansive people who are naturally equipped to adapt their bodies to their needs. The installation invites viewers to explore the possibility of human life after we surrender to the elements. What can we learn from our African ancestors who sought freedom in the depths of the Atlantic? What nourishment can be found in the fluidity of the ocean? Can we find new ways to breathe?
Rraine Hanson is a Jamaican transdiciplinary artist, most interested in utilizing design and mixed media to tell stories centering the experiences and imaginations of queer and trans people of colour. Their visual style is heavily informed by surrealism and the aesthetics of their Caribbean upbringing and is always seeking to answer the question: what can be found in the crevice between our dreams and our memories? They were recently awarded the 2020 Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant for their latest short film Mooncake, which premiered at e-flux in New York City and has since screened at film festivals across the globe. When they’re not experimenting with their own storytelling, they work in television helping art departments build all kinds of different worlds. The hands-on crafting experience informs the methodology behind all their personal creative endeavors, both written and visual.
Rooms 3 + 4
Denisio Truitt, Nikki Brooks, Nailah Griffin, Curated by Elvira Michelle, PRESSURE Multi-media (Paintings, sculpture, and video), 2023.
PRESSURE
Feat.
Denisio Truitt, Nikki Brooks, and Nailah Griffin
Curated by
Elvira Michelle
Pressure is the influence or effect of someone or something. This show explores the social, institutional, and misogynistic pressure in our society expressed by three African-American women.
Denisio Truitt: (she/they) is a Liberian-American visual artist, and designer. She is the owner of Denisio Truitt Atelier, which features sustainable capsule collections, clothing collaborations with artists, and prints of her original artwork. Denisio received her Bachelors of Art from Washington and Lee University where she majored in Creative writing and Studio Art. During her time there, she worked in the theater and art department, learning the fundamentals of both costume design and portraiture.
Denisio has shown work at group shows for Art Basel in 2018 and the New Orleans African American Art Museum in 2019.
insta- @denisiotruittatelier, tiktok- @denisiotruitt
Nikki Brooks: Nikki Brooks was born in 1975 in Brooklyn, New York, but was raised in Spotsylvania County, VA. She is a multi-disciplinary artist that works specifically in installations and assemblage that are infused with digital and audio elements, paintings, sculpted text, and collage spaces. These works encourage the viewer to connect in forms of writing, storytelling, and shared dialogue through workshops that focus on diversity, inclusion, truth- telling and lament. Nikki’s artwork focuses on social activism and art. She creates artworks that provoke the audience to interact with the objects, images, sculptures, and writings presented in the space. Artists like Fred Wilson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Maya Lin, and Adrian Piper have inspired and influenced the way Nikki curates her space to become this communal space for all viewers. She describes her created spaces: as “walking into one of my collages.”
Nailah Griffin: Nailah Griffin is a socio-emotional engagement artist and land steward born in New Orleans bred by Brooklyn. Currently, she is working on a solo project that she will be co-curating with her Dad, Baba Z. She was a member of the 912 Julia Street Project family where she curated an outdoor garden oasis called “the Jungle”. A Multi-Disciplinary artist, her education came from years of weekly classes at the Brooklyn Museum, during after-school programs, and from being a part of the underground art and poetry community of New York. Her first official exhibit was as a feature of the Lucky Art Fair in New Orleans; where her immersive space "Who Holds the Strong", a single mom sanctuary, tackled how single mothers manage their mental health and artistry. Inspired by the beautiful nuances of life and all the mess in between, her work flourishes in creating holistic safe spaces through the mediums of collage, chromotherapy, items of nostalgia and spirituality. Nailah can be found only on instagram, @msmowgli.
@msmowgli