Abstract
This paper focuses on community art projects that underscore forgotten narratives and identities integral to the city of New Orleans. Public art in the city takes many formations, including that of street art, murals and graffiti, embedded into the city’s landscape, on its walls, street corners, and houses. For instance, in 2021 when the pandemic put Mardi Gras parades to a halt, residents decided to turn their houses into stationary “house floats.” Houses became the palette for innate sculptures and other forms of large-scale artwork. Similarly, the People for Public Art, a community funded art imitative inspired by the house floats has transformed a home in the 7th Ward into a permanent installation, “The New Orleans Queens of Sound & Soul” showcasing 6-foot mural portraits of local women musicians. Through the lens of rhetoric and writing studies, and applying a visual-material rhetorical approach, I analyze how the public art collectives of the Backstreet Cultural Museum, the House of Dance and Feathers, and People for Public Art, articulate different histories and traditions by taking art out of its institutional boundaries into a space where it is community curated. Because the art becomes part of the neighborhood’s makeup, attached to and encompassed within it, the notion of place invokes the art with a visual materiality that is immersive and tactile in its experience. A viewer does not only experience the art, but the history of the neighborhood that informs and inspires the art that adorn its walls.
Presenters
Sarah HirschContinuing Lecturer, Writing Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Museum Transformations: Pathways to Community Engagement
KEYWORDS
Community Engagement, Advocacy, Visual Rhetoric, Curating, Curation, Alternative Museums, Access
