My NOLA research project was focused on community responsive art and the interaction between people and art. I aimed to understand more about how art is used as a way to express and represent oneself and the surrounding community. To achieve this, I talked to people in the art community and conducted interviews with art professors at local universities, staff at art organizations, and local artists. We discussed their views on public art in New Orleans and the importance of community as it relates to art.

I had many enriching conversations through interviews, but found that some of the most impactful interactions I had with locals were more natural, and ended up not being recorded. Frequent topics that would come up were things along the lines of differences in communities based on location, issues of dislocation and gentrification, and the sways and shifts of culture. One interaction that I found impactful occurred after I had toured StudioBE and was taking photos of murals nearby in Bywater. A woman saw me and asked if I was looking at the murals. She began to tell me about how her dad is one of the people depicted in a mural on St Claude and Franklin St, right near my Airbnb! The mural, titled “The Third Line,” is an homage to the city’s Second Line culture. She told me all about how her dad was known for Second Lining and how she knows a bunch of other people depicted in the mural, just by growing up in the city and culture.

This project, being humanities based, was a great way to be able to explore a new city through getting to know locals and them recounting personal experiences. I prefer to ask some questions that will elicit some emotional response, such as having someone recount their favorite celebration in the city or what is most important to them. I met people of all different identities, backgrounds, ages, etc., and I had found these conversations to be significant in seeing, as well as understanding, different points of view. The whole experience gave me such a broader view on life by simply talking with different people. At a base level, we all have things in common despite possible differing opinions. I think that getting to know people from all different walks of life and their life experiences is such an important learning skill in the way of understanding one another as people and exchanging knowledge, finding common ground, even if we’re seemingly ‘different.’

As I was in New Orleans and trying to conceptualize how I want to form my research, I began to think about the significance of oral history. I was reminded of the Civilizations in Africa class I took which expressed the significance of oral stories in many non-Western cultures, even though historically, Western academia holds written history at a higher significance or standard. As I touched on earlier, my project was primarily conversation based, some recorded some not. New Orleans is very unique in its cultural history, community, and art. It’s also a place that has and still does face many challenges and inequalities, such as natural disasters, systemic effects of racism due to the aftermath of slavery and colonization, current gentrification and redlining, etc. With my research, I began to scratch the surface of understanding place, history, and people through art, and how culture creates art. I had conversations with different people about the presence of public art that commemorates Confederate history, some of these have been removed recently. We also talked about public murals and sculptures which are meant to uplift and recognize influential historical Black figures of the area, such as Allen Toussaint, or envision a future for a better world. One piece I saw that really stuck with me was also at StudioBE; it was a sculpture of a cop car overturned. Above it, a lawn chair and tree sat, expressing peace, relaxation, a new beginning. Many of the artists I talked to coincidentally touched on how art is a way to respond or interact with your surroundings or world circumstances, as well as a way to reimagine the world we live in.