As part of a year-long investigation of castles as buildings, metaphors, and systems of power, Kolaj Institute will host a week-long artist residency focused on Plantations. Pre-20th century industrial agriculture in the Southern United States was organized by plantations, single crop farms that used forced labor to grow commodities that were sold on to global markets. Lost Cause historical narratives have cast these sites in a Romantic light as beacons of genteel Southern culture, but a more honest review of the historical narrative shows them to be sites of torture and imprisonment, sources of trauma. While some historians have viewed plantations as race-based feudal systems, others have worked to create more complex narratives that explain the forced migration and enslavement of millions of Africans. The story of Slavery has been widely explored in popular media and art, but the systems of power and labor created post-emancipation have received little attention.
Proponents of celebratory history wish to remember a time of social order, but as Allen C. Guelzo wrote in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, “Alongside the Romantic image of magnolias at midnight lay a relentless economic rationality; alongside the facade of racial reciprocity lay resistance and revolt; and alongside the casual tolerance of slave labor in producing their most lucrative commodity, Southerners displayed a fierce personal independence and a resentment at condescension and control. Southerners veered between assertions that theirs was a thoroughgoing slave society, in which ‘every fibre…is so interwoven with it, that it cannot be abolished without the destruction of the other,’ and realizations that Southerners were as much participants in a liberal democratic order as any other Americans, though one inexplicably incorporating the quirk of slave labor.” The interwoven threads of Plantation culture did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation. How these threads were rewoven informs American society as we know it today. What role can artists play in making this history understood?
During this residency, collage artists come to New Orleans and explore the history of Plantations and learn how to adapt their artist practice to pick up the unfinished work of history and make art that contributes to the civic discourse. Through interactive sessions, visits to plantations, and collaborative collage making, artists will explore their process and practice; present a slideshow of their work; receive supportive, critical, curatorial feedback about their ideas; and discuss contemporary issues.
The residency will speak to issues of appropriation, copyright, and fair use and explore how the artist’s choice and understanding of material shapes the narrative of the artwork. Over the course of the week, artists will be challenged to make a single artwork (or small study for an artwork) that speaks to a larger body of work. Artists will leave the residency with a new perspective on their art practice.
Prior to gathering in New Orleans, we will hold two virtual sessions where we review the program and deconstruct artist practice. On Sunday, 13 October, the group will meet in New Orleans for an orientation and review of the schedule. Participants will view the artwork in the exhibition, “Identity, History, & Place” on view at Kolaj Institute Gallery and consider the strategies artists used to include or speak to history, place, and identity in their work. On Monday, participants will visit the Laura Plantation and the Whitney Plantation with an eye towards how the history is told. Tuesday and Wednesday we will meet at Kolaj Institute Gallery for collage making and conversation. Ric Kasini Kadour will present a curatorial framework for the project. Jeanna Penn will present on how she uses history and archives in her practice. On Thursday, artists will present a single artwork (or small study for an artwork) that speaks to a larger body of work and the themes they want to explore.
After the Residency, artists will be invited to propose artwork for inclusion in Kolaj Institute’s Castle Project, an exhibition, book, and related programs in 2025-2026 that invite viewers to consider how the history of castles, colonies, plantations, and corporations relate to one another and shape the world we live in today.
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