On the last morning of October 2024, small talk on the way to the opening of Prospect.6 lingered on how hot it had gotten. How we’ve run out of ways to describe how the sun feels differently on our skin, now. Our minds are responding to environmental collapse in strange ways. While the most stubborn still opt for the self-defense mechanism of denial—Business-as-usual! Disaster is “natural” and only happens people who live there!—those who face the harsh reality head-on are given this reward: the beautiful parts of life on earth become clearer in the face of their loss. The Japanese call this bittersweet clarity mono no aware, a concept powerfully captured in artist Ruth Owens’ Black Delight, An Ecopoem (2024). Owens’ video installation illustrates the heart of Prospect.6: The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home. It was the first work in the triennial to deliver a gut-punch to my own eco-grief.
Black Delight, An Ecopoem is a love letter for the artist’s Louisiana home that unfolds in two scenes: a waterborne view of the coastline—one that we know is disappearing—and a Black dance party that is tender, then joyful, then bursting energetically at the seams. The videos appear to document the same time of night in places that seem worlds away from each other, but also just down the street. They present evidence of interconnected life at the water’s edge, which is sustained with a localized evolution of ecological balance through culture: countering grief with celebration; unnatural silence with familiar music; and nostalgia with the creation of memories, now, while we can. The videos are projected in the round, covering all four walls of the room and surrounding viewers with eye-level Louisiana horizons, as their shadows cast on the walls. As I become a part of the installation, I try not to make an impact on the landscape, causing me to choose my vantage point with care as I tried to witness everything, all at once.
Prospect.6: The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home is the sixth iteration of New Orleans’ celebrated art triennial. It features works, installed throughout the city, by 51 prominent contemporary artists. Prospect.6 is curated by Miranda Lash, a former curator at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and by internationally acclaimed artist Ebony G. Patterson. The concept of Prospect.6 positions New Orleans as a harbinger—a military term for a person who ventures ahead and announces what is to come. This premise extends beyond the city’s geographic vulnerability to climate change (a reality shared by many frontline communities worldwide) or its ongoing struggles with post-colonial histories (also, tragically, not unique) to highlight New Orleans’ profound cultural legacy as a hub of an interconnected global majority—a place where historical and environmental challenges are met with searing insight and boundless creativity.
The triennial asks questions about navigating a world in flux that now have relevancy for many people—including myself. Following Hurricane Ida, and after 14 years in New Orleans, my partner and I decided to move our family in search of a more climate-stable home. Our family of 4 was part of 32 million displacements caused by weather-related hazards in 2022, a 41% increase versus 2008 levels. We live in a time when there are more people on Earth who live outside their home country than ever before in human existence. Millions are asking themselves: Can we afford to leave? Can we afford to stay? How can we carry our home with us as we go, if not physically, then symbolically—just enough to teach our children the lessons we hoped they would’ve learned there? Prospect.6 is conceptually grounded in these dilemmas and born from the artists’ lived experiences of trying to resolve them. For some artists, these conversations were happening in real time, as they produced their work for the exhibition.
Perhaps in answer to activist Grace Lee Boggs’ question “What time is it on the clock of the world?” Lash and Patterson curated the three final performances of opening weekend to lead viewers through a narrative arc of collapse and renewal aligned with the position of the sun. This zoomed-out temporal perspective mirrored the conceptual framework of the triennial, suggesting history’s cyclical nature and lambasting the imperial systems that have destabilized our present and led to an uncertain future. It’s possible that each work in Prospect.6 can be situated within these dimensions of decline, afterlife, and rebirth to offer insights into how we might move through what happens next. Let’s begin with dusk.