The New Orleans Art Diaspora

Video

This is an exploration of the New Orleans art scene.

Both traditional forms of art like museums and unconventional like the unique street art scene was studied along with interviews with artist/skater, Irvin Washington.

Allison Swann

My Nola My Story via Youtube

Mass Communications department at Xavier University of Louisiana.

December 5, 2021

Irvin Washington

My Nola, My Story.

My Nola, My Story 2021 Exhibit.

English

Final Cut Pro X, video

A Digital Humanities project by Xavier University of Louisiana's Mass Communication department students, led by Dr. Shearon Roberts

Allison (voiceover): New Orleans is a city rich in history and culture. From Mardi Gras to the French Quarter, one thing that stands out is the southern Art diaspora. To truly understand this wildly unique city, travelers must venture beyond its highly trafficked tourist core to explore the lesser-known yet wonderfully diverse neighborhoods and museums that help make the Crescent City one of America’s preeminent centers of art and culture.

Irvin Washington: What makes New Orleans art unique would definitely be just the amount of passion that goes into the piece itself. I mean, there's nothing like seeing a New Orleans piece of art by a New Orleans artist, and it's just something that they add its that I don’t know it that New Orleans flavor that spice that you just know that that's some New Orleans artwork and they always come from a place of like, can’t even explain it just its just like it hits different burh it just hit different

Allison (voiceover): While other city museums have foreign acquired paintings or sculptures, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art features shrines and spiritual temples to voodoo priestesses and biblical figures to document their cultural significance in New Orleans.

Allison (voiceover): The museum also demonstrates the southern diaspora, by showing not only specific New Orleans culture but the broader southern culture that has acted as a melting pot and shaped the uniqueness of the city.

Irvin Washington: I think having art museums is important because they serve as these capsules of history and time, and housing all these differences create different creative minds and their bodies. So many different people express what they were going through or what they wanted to convey to the world. We're a city filled with so many cultures, we've been through so much and we do so many things and I feel like it's very important for New Orleans to have, you know, to be in our museums as well as have our museums because we like trendsetters, Come on, you know jazz, you name it no one is in New Orleans is like we out here.

Irving Washington: There are definitely some that influence the wall. More particularly than one escape team is seen as definitely overlooked, especially in his city. So my artwork especially well, I'm saying it twice, but specifically, this artwork and this body just is highlighting the skate scene of New Orleans in terms of this in this body of work. In particular, I went around the city of New Orleans for about half a year, a year and a half up to a year just went to various skate spots and went to the park everywhere where there was skaters, I was just shooting. Some of them were a little more, you know, action-packed some were Just one more, you know, like this one, just like in the moment, you know, I want to highlight the raw, the real and uncut. In this scene I wanted people to see skating for what skating truly is not for you know, there's a lot of stigmas and stereotypes that are involved with the skate scene. So I want to highlight the positive side of the skate scene and show that there's so much to offer in terms of just uniqueness and different different types of people that exist in it.

Allison (voiceover): In addition to traditional art, New Orleans is rich in street art. At the local skate parks, personal representations of art like graffiti and murals are abundant. Skate culture coincides with art, especially physical art like sculptures. Skate spots are plastered in art, life, and experiences, the same way New Orleans is.

Allison (voiceover): Skaters in New Orleans have turned rundown shacks in the woods into canvases for their work and experiences. It's little places like this that show the uniqueness of New Orleans in every aspect and especially in art.

Allison (voiceover): Art is not only pictures and viewing things in New Orleans. Art is experiences, its life, its community. Art is documenting the importance of being in New Orleans and in keeping its memory alive. Not just through painting or phones carved in cement, but in the memories and people that surround them. Art was born and thrives in New Orleans.

4:42 (four minutes, forty - two seconds)

Allison Swann

Dr. Shearon Roberts