18 Nov Wombs Are the World in Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans
Posted at 10:01h
in Wombs; Femicide Defined
Wombs was conceived as a series of documentary visual arts and music collaborations. The first, Wombs Are the World, was an illuminated storefront window tableau created as a Bureau of Change collaboration featuring Delgado Community college art student Nikomia Henry. Paige Allyn, also a Delgado student apprenticing at Bureau, contributed in collaborative development and led publicity.
Henry’s optimistic visuals draw ears to an original soundscape produced at Bureau’s Bywater studio, “A Song for Her” by Caren Green, that names historic Black women in New Orleans in dialog with national culture bearers and human rights emblems at a time while women worldwide face escalating silencing and retribution to diminish our voices and power.
Installed at the public art space Urban Sidewalk | Installation Space in downtown New Orleans, Wombs Are the World debuted in Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, the 4th triennial citywide exhibition of international contemporary art in New Orleans from 2017 to 2018.
For her first large scale public project,
Delgado Community College student Nikomia Henry
collaborated with BUREAU to bring one of
her character portraits into three dimensions
set to a soundscape, “A Song for Her,”
by New Orleans singer-songwriter Caren Green.
Like much of Henry’s painting and drawing,
the project is influenced by Black women in pop culture,
R&B musicians and body symbolism in Hindu deities.
Wombs Are the World at Urban Sidewalk | Installation Space, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 2017 – May 2018, a project of the 2017-2018 cohort of Bureau of Change’s interdisciplinary apprenticeship program directed and taught by Bureau founder and lead faculty Margot Herster.