Imago Mundi: Reparation

REPARATION shifts the focus of the Imago Mundi collection from previous collections of national and regional identities to the cultural identity of a resonant city – New Orleans. Hundreds of New Orleans artists were invited to create works utilizing a 10 x 12 cm (4 x 4 3/4”) canvas. These tiny works, also including 29 works from the Community Works of Louisiana summer program for children, will join the larger Imago Mundi collection of tens of thousands of world artists.

This collection dedicated to New Orleans, comprising over 190 10x12cm artworks fits perfectly with the spirit of the Imago Mundi project. Some of the artists are very young − others less so, there are established names and new talents, men and women, black and white: a visual polyphony that totally reflects the jazz style that was born here.

Side by side in these artworks we find commitment and transgression, sin and atonement, provocation and reflection, paganism and religion, the American dream and real substance, artistic influences and memories of Africa, scepticism and commitment to a better society.

Instead of constructing a collective exhibition in search of common themes, common practices, similarities, trends, movements–consensus and aesthetic harmony, we can also take an opposite approach to emphasize disparity, dissent, rebellion, diversity, even politicallyincorrect stances.

Reparation breaks with the Imago Mundi practice to focus on national cultural identities to investigate the cultural identity of a city–New Orleans, a regional, national and international cultural center torn apart by catastrophe, forged by a killer hurricane in tandem with the failure of a man-made levee system, inadequately constructed to protect its citizenry.

Reparation includes children, women and male artists, black and white, Asian and Latino, gay and straight, musicians and street artists, designers and DJs, Mardi Gras Indians and word artists, from a historic creole port city which has retained its African and European cultural roots better than most American cities. In an open and democratic project such as Imago Mundi, we see patterns, grids, relationships, iconoclasts, methodologies, ideologies, visions and observations at play.