Organized to coincide with the anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, “Disaster! One Year After,” the latest exhibition at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, displays the work of artists who utilize varied mediums to address climate-related disasters and their impact on humans and the environment.
In the wake of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Southeast Asia, Zilkha Gallery Curator Nina Felshin felt it was important to have an exhibition that focused on weather-related concerns.
“I like to do shows that engage with social and political issues and this is something I have been thinking about for a while,” Felshin said. “I’m very interested in the issues these events raise in terms of race, class, climate changes. And, of course, I’m interested in how artists respond to these things.”
Many of the pieces in the exhibition focus specifically on Hurricane Katrina. Francis Cape’s “Waterline,” is an installation of framed photographs of two New Orleans middle class neighborhoods hung above a painted wood paneling lining the interior walls of the installation. The frames are hung in a level line, which serves to emphasize the development of the waterline in the photographs. Modeled after a traditional New Orleans shotgun house, the architectural elements of the installation contrast with the photographs of devastation and give the piece elements of both construction and destruction.
Sasha Rudensky ’01, was volunteering gutting houses when she took the three photographs displayed in “Disaster!” Choosing to photograph the interior of a New Orleans home, Rudensky did not want to photograph obvious scenes of destruction.
“I thought a lot about the violence of what happened there, but focused on it in a more subtle way,” Rudensky said.
Rudensky’s chromogenic prints each hint at a human presence. The photograph, “Pink Towels,” shows two eerily intact pink towels hanging on a clearly water-damaged wall. Rudensky’s favorite in the series is “Photograph,” which shows a framed photograph hanging on a wall in the abandoned house.
“It’s sort of like this notion of the people in the photograph drowning because the waterline comes up to the woman’s nose and cuts through the mouth,” Rudensky said.
People are also absent from the photographs in Chris Jordan’s series “In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster New Orleans.” His photographs show the cost of Hurricane Katrina on a personal scale and suggest that human factors played a significant role in the catastrophe that occurred in New Orleans.
The last Katrina-specific work is a video, “The Drive.” This piece focuses on New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward and utilizes footage of neighborhoods, interviews with residents, and contextual maps to illustrate life in New Orleans post-Katrina. The video is the result of a community-based effort to present the duality of life in the wake of the storm.
Another video in the exhibit that directly relates to a natural disaster is Mary Lucier’s “Floodsongs,” which looks at the 1997 flood of the Red River in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Accompanying the video instillation is a display of a fallen chair and lamp, showing how furniture is often overturned in a catastrophe.
Created specifically for “Disaster!” Donna Ruff’s altered books contain words that evoke recent disasters. Ruff took three books and scratched out the type to keep only words that refer to disasters. The words that remain are powerful. In, “Vision of Despair,” the book reads:
“In darknenss no end to this vision of despair. The truth floated on the sluggish water. Day and night all hear the cry: home was soon lost in the storm.”
Some works in “Disaster!” are more political than others. “Survivaball,” is a documentation of the Halliburton Solves Global Warming Project by the environmental and corporate ethics activist group The Yes Men. The Yes Men are also pranksters: here they impersonated Halliburton executives and attempted to sell a new product entitled Survivaball, an inflatable orb designed to save corporate executives from the effects of global warming. The life-size model of Survivaball is perhaps the most eye-catching piece in the exhibit; the giant pod simply looks ridiculous.
Accompanying the model are photographs of a faux Halliburton executive named Fred posing with the Survivaball, an informational poster about Survivaball’s technological capabilities, and an instructional guide that shows you how to, amongst other things, draw power from an animal and how to join with other Survivaballs.
Adam’s Cvijanovic’s oil on panel, “Star,” depicts houses swept away in the air by a natural disaster. Household possessions such as Tide, Coca-Cola, cars, and an issue of Star Magazine that proclaims, “Boy stealing backstabbing betrayal! Paris off with Mary-Kate’s man,” swirl amidst the destructing homes
There are pieces in “Disaster!” that do not directly refer to weather-related events, but that evoke them. Donna Dennis’ “Cataract Cabin,” is a sculpture of a cabin by the shore precariously built on top of a boulder. The boulder is cracked and inside lays household debris.
“My work always has this impending disaster stuff there…” Dennis said. “Inside [the cabin] are objects kind of cast away and burned. They represent memories, burned memories, burnt cast-offs.”
This is the first time “Cataract Cabin” has been shown indoors, and there is usually water circulating out of the pipes at the side of the sculpture.
Shoshana Dentz’s gouache, a method of painting with opaque watercolor mixed with a preparation of gum, on glass of a vortex of barbed wire, entitled “Portal #10,” was part of the recent “Up Against the Wall,” exhibit. Felshin felt that the piece also resonated with the subject matter in Disaster!
“To me, this swirling vortex suggested swirling water and the wire evokes the extreme measures that were used against the people of New Orleans after the storm,” Felshin said.
“Disaster! One Year After,” is a powerful exhibit that expresses the impact of natural disasters through a myriad of mediums. The works featured evoke loss and precariousness, depict how the environment is suffering, communicate political messages, and convey a need for change. After observing this thought-provoking exhibit, the viewer cannot help but leave “Disaster!” reflecting on these issues as well.
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