Multimedia artist kai lumumba barrow highlights possibilities of reclaiming public space with the work Abolition Playground — a multifaceted project consisting of everyday objects and found materials such as weathered doors, shutters and wooden planks as well as cornmeal, clay, and rubble. These various interventions in the landscape of Norman C. Francis Parkway, between Bienville and Canal, indicate sites of white supremacist systems of control while empowering counter-narratives of navigation, abolition, and play. Click here for more information.

kai lumumba barrow (b. 1959, Chicago) is a self-taught artist and founder of Gallery of the Streets, a national network of artists, activists, and scholars who work at the nexus of art, political education, social change and community engagement. 

As an artist, barrow is interested in the praxis of radical imagination. Experimenting with abolition as an artistic vernacular, her sprawling paintings, installations, and sculptures are formed in traditional and non-traditional environments to transgress biological, ideological, and carceral borders. barrow’s installations and ritualistic environments recall African diasporic cosmologies, incorporating reusable materials such as dirt, moss, rocks, machines, money, and bones as a visual and ethnographic language. These remnants construct the archives of a place; the afterlife of everyday mundanity. In this sense, barrow’s work is memoir – grounded in repair, renewal, and regeneration. It is a map of what once was, what currently is, and a nudge to what might be. 

barrow has previously received artist residencies, fellowships, and awards from Project Row Houses; the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Joan Mitchell Center; A Studio in the Woods; the Weavers Project Fellowship; Alternate Roots; Antenna; and the Kindle Project.

Artists of Public Memory is a new public art commission that invites Louisiana-born and/or based contemporary artists to share their visions of how monuments and collective memories can appear and function in our landscape, society, and public space. This initiative marks the first time Prospect has invited Louisiana-based curators and cultural organizations to nominate artists for a public art commission. Distinct from Prospect.6, which is scheduled to open in Fall 2024, Artists of Public Memory represents a key part of Prospect’s commitment to having a broader presence in New Orleans that extends beyond the parameters of the triennial exhibition. 

Artists of Public Memory is funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project with additional major funding from the Ford Foundation; the Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation; the Wagner Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Projects will be unveiled throughout 2023 and will include public programming, artist and community talks, youth and educational opportunities, an accompanying publication, and digital resources. Click here for more information. 

Prospect New Orleans was conceived in the tradition of international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and the Bienal de São Paulo to showcase practices from around the world in settings throughout the city with an emphasis on site-specificity. The Prospect exhibition is a citywide contemporary art triennial, formalized in 2008 and now looking ahead to its sixth iteration, curated by Miranda Lash & Ebony G. Patterson and running November 2, 2024 –February 2, 2025.  Click here for more information.