Prospect New Orleans 2020 Artists Announced

Prospect New Orleans has announced its artist list for its 2020 triennial, Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow. It opens to the public on Oct. 24 and will be on view through January 24, 2021. The list includes Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford, who was in the first Prospect New Orleans more than a decade ago with his sculpture Mithra. Also on the list is the late Georgia-born artist Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015) with her Southern vernacular architecture shack sculptures, and Simone Leigh. Leigh will install a temporary public monument on the site of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s sculpture, which was taken down in 2017, 133 years after it was erected.

The artist list for the citywide exhibition features artists from the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe, and will be presented in museums, cultural spaces, and public sites throughout New Orleans.

The list, composed of 49 individual artists, also includes the collective Cooking Sections (Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual), and The Neighborhood Story Project. This Prospect’s artists include Dawoud Bey, Karon Davis, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Jamal Cyrus, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, ektor garcia, Jennie C. Jones, Mimi Lauter, Candice Lin, Rodney McMillian, Hương Ngô, and Jennifer Packer.

Kiki Smith, Keni Anwar, Ron Bechet, Willie Birch, Welmon Sharlhorne and the late photographer George Dureau (1930-2014), all from New Orleans, are also included.

Works from Bradford, Leigh, Kevin Beasley, Glenn Ligon, Wangechi Mutu, and Nari Ward are commissioned specifically for Prospect.5. Ligon’s new work confronts the history of monuments and memorials in New Orleans, while Beasley’s will consider issues around land, inheritance, and ownership. There will also be a new bronze sculpture by Mutu, which proposes a hybrid between humans and the natural world.

Prospect.5’s curators and artistic directors are Naima J. Keith, Vice President of Education and Public Programs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and Diana Nawi, an independent curator based in Los Angeles. They have organized this triennial round the theme “Yesterday we said tomorrow,” inspired by the title of Christian Scott’s 2010 album Yesterday You Said Tomorrow. Scott is a New Orleans–born jazz musician. (The album references a reality that resonates in New Orleans and beyond — that change is often delayed, and often denied.)

Many of the Prospect’s projects for 2020 will explore the state of the city since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the launch of Prospect in 2008, and draw heavily on the perspectives of artists of African descent, with more than 60 percent of the artists being black.

States Keith in a press release: “One of the key features of Prospect has always been the vibrancy and complexity of New Orleans itself and our exhibition seeks to be attuned to that. We brought together what feels like a truly diverse group of artists, ranging from emerging to leading voices in the field, around ideas. We wanted to take on ambitious projects with emerging artists, to revisit familiar names through bold new endeavors, and to undertake an in-depth look at the work of recent art history.”

The full list of artists is as follows:
Laura Aguilar (b. 1959, San Gabriel, CA; d. 2018, Los Angeles)
Katrina Andry (b. 1981, New Orleans; lives in New Orleans)
Keni Anwar (b. 1993, New Orleans; lives in New Orleans)
Felipe Baeza (b. 1987, Guanajuato, Mexico; lives in Brooklyn, New York)
Kevin Beasley (b. 1985, Lynchburg, Virginia; lives in New York)
Ron Bechet (b. 1956, New Orleans; lives in New Orleans)
Paul Stephen Benjamin (b. 1966, Chicago; lives in Atlanta)
Dawoud Bey (b. 1953, New York; lives in Chicago)
Willie Birch (b. 1942, New Orleans; lives in New Orleans)
Dineo Seshee Bopape (b. 1981, Polokwane, South Africa; lives in Johannesburg)
Phoebe Boswell (b. 1982, Nairobi; lives in London)
Mark Bradford (b. 1961, Los Angeles; lives in Los Angeles)
Beverly Buchanan (b. 1940, North Carolina; d. 2015, Michigan)
Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939, Philadelphia; lives in Paris and Rome)
Cooking Sections (Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual; established in London, 2013; live in London)
Adriana Corral (b. 1983, El Paso; lives in Houston)
Jamal Cyrus (b. 1973, Houston; lives in Houston)
Karon Davis (b. 1977, Reno, NV; lives in Los Angeles)
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer (b. 1979, New York; lives in Los Angeles)
George Dureau (b. 1930, New Orleans; d. 2014, New Orleans)
ektor garcia (b. 1985 Red Bluff, California; lives in Mexico, New York, and elsewhere)
Sharon Hayes (b. 1970, Baltimore; lives in Philadelphia)
EJ Hill (b. 1985, Los Angeles; lives in Los Angeles)
Sky Hopinka (b. 1984, Ferndale, Washington; lives in Bellingham, Washington)
Elliott Hundley (b. 1975, Greensboro, North Carolina; lives in Los Angeles)
Jennie C. Jones (b. 1968, Cincinnati; lives in Hudson, New York)
Josh Kun (b. 1971, Los Angeles; lives in Los Angeles)
Mimi Lauter (b. 1982, San Francisco; lives in Los Angeles)
Simone Leigh (b. 1967, Chicago; lives in New York)
Tau Lewis (b. 1993, Toronto; lives in Toronto)
Glenn Ligon (b. 1960, New York; lives in New York)
Candice Lin (b. 1979, Concord, Massachusetts; lives in Los Angeles)
Tiona Nekkia McClodden (b. 1981, Blytheville, Arkansas; lives in Philadelphia)
Dave McKenzie (b. 1977, Kingston, Jamaica; lives in New York)
Rodney McMillian (b. 1969, Columbia, South Carolina; lives in Los Angeles)
Wangechi Mutu (b. 1972, Nairobi; lives in Nairobi and New York)
The Neighborhood Story Project (founded in 2004; based in New Orleans)
Hương Ngô (b. 1979 Hong Kong; lives in Chicago)
Jennifer Packer (b. 1984, Philadelphia; lives in New York)
Malcolm Peacock (b.1994, Raleigh, NC; lives in New Orleans)
Anastasia Pelias (b.1959, New Orleans; lives in New Orleans)
Naudline Pierre (b. 1989, Leomister, Massachusetts; lives in New York)
Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985, East Palo Alto, California; lives in New York)
Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994, Gallup, NM; lives in Gallup, NM)
Jamilah Sabur (b. 1987, St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica; lives in Miami)
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (b. 1972, San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico)
Welmon Sharlhorne (b. 1952, Houma, Louisiana; lives in New Orleans)
Kiki Smith (b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany; lives in New York)
Carlos Villa (b. 1936, San Francisco; d. 2013, San Francisco)
Nari Ward (b. 1963, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica; lives in New York)
Cosmo Whyte (b. 1982, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica; lives in Atlanta)

For more on Prospect: New Orleans, please visit its website here.