Prospect.4: at the New Orleans Museum of Art

At the New Orleans Museum of Art, Prospect.4 starts in The Great Hall with eleven paintings from Barkley L._Hendricks. The special exhibition spreads to the second floor in two different locations: photographs on the left side, paintings, collages and videos on the right. Raised in different cultures and countries, the seven artists featured in the show share common themes through their art.

Hendricks's portraits inspired by European Masters like Velasquez, are in tune with a modern world and the museum's neo-classical white columns provide the perfect frame for the compositions. His subjects contrast with or melt in monochrome backgrounds and project an aura of sophistication through their pose, expression and/or attributes. Hendrick's portraits are the story. On the second floor, Dawit Petros's portraits contribute to the narrative as part of the landscape. At times, a mere observer, the photographer does not get involved in the drama captured through the lens, like the beaching of a boat. Other times, he stages uncanny scenes involving strangers surrounded by their natural pristine environment, partly hidden behind framed images preserving their anonymity and disrupting the quiet landscape. By whatever means of expression, including the construction of abstract compositions with fragments of photographs, the artist brings the viewer along his journeys, from Sicily, Mauritania, Morocco, ..., sharing his travels through places and time. The ten works on display in the adjoining gallery are the result of the collaboration between a photographer Gauri Gill and a Warli painter Rajesh Vangad. The photographs, mainly landscapes, depict the present and through the addition of aboriginal drawings connect to the past and gain a spiritual dimension.

In the contemporary art gallery, Alexis Esquivel's four "narrative paintings" deal with nationalism, colonialism, racism, through allegories. La Muerte de Gulliver, 2015, illustrates the artist's "civic" engagement. Gulliver (Spain) is depicted as a dead toreador, chest pierced by banderillas representing the Basque National Flag and the flag flown by supporters of Catalan Independence among others. Cuba and Puerto Rico's flags are also featured, reflecting the shared yearning for nationalism on both sides of the Atlantic. The painting could not be more prescient as the fight for Catalonia's independence goes on. The site specific piece from Xaviera Simmons is a great introduction to her work. A mural made of a succession of words taken from political speeches and texts, written in white on a black background lines up an entire wall. Like a graffiti, it is an expression of protest. Political art defines Simmons's practice. Two videos and a series of photographs in which she performs confirm this. Her message is focusing on "the vast financial, social and hierarchical disparities between people from the African and European Diasporas" and is aimed to the United States and New Orleans in particular. Njideka Akunyili Crosby, a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, is represented by four of her paintings-photographs-collages. Starting with images found on the internet and photographs from her family, she rebuilds a composite world born from her roots and manages to harmonize three different cultures: rural and urban Nigeria where she is born, and New York City. The life size of her figurative collages engages the viewer who becomes part of the scenes.
Of the seven artists, five were born in the seventies and deliver a message through their practice, call it "civic" engagement for Esquivel or political for  Simmons. Not only do they favor figurative, from Crosby, the youngest (born in 1983) to Hendricks, the oldest (born in 1945), they also keep being inspired by European Masters. Hendricks who revived the tradition of portraiture is now followed by younger artists like Kehinde Wiley. It is not a surprise to find Barkley Hendricks displayed prominently at the NOMA. Trevor Schoonmaker, Artistic Director and Curator of this year's Triennial, organized the first retrospective of his work Birth of the Cool at the Nasher Museum of Art in 2008 and was in the process of selecting the portraits to be displayed at NOMA when the artist passed away last April.
The list of selected artists includes a culturally varied group. Their common theme can be resumed in three words found on one of the exhibition's wall text: "identity, displacement and cultural hybridity".

photographs by the author:

Barkley L. Hendricks "The Way You Look Tonight/ Diagonal Graciousness (Self-Portrait)", 1981

Alexis Esquivel "La Muerte de Gulliver", 2015