BIENNIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Prospect.1 will present a number of special projects to respond to the destruction wrought on the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Region in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. Mark Bradford will create a wooden Ark utilizing the shell of a destroyed house and other discarded scraps of wood in the Lower Ninth Ward. Paul Villinski, a New York-based artist known for creating work from debris who has said he found “new, urgent purpose in the disaster of Hurricane Katrina,” will create his Emergency Response Studio, a “green”-powered mobile artist’s studio, out of a discarded, now-iconic FEMA trailer. South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa, who first visited New Orleans in the more immediate wake of the hurricane, returned to the Lower Ninth Ward in late 2007 to create his first photographs outside of Africa, which will debut at Prospect.1.

Highlights of the biennial also include works by artists who have selected unique locations in which to install work. Adam Cuijanovic will paint one of his murals inside an abandoned house in the Lower Ninth Ward, and Nari Ward will convert an abandoned church in the Lower Ninth Ward into an installation. Kay Rosen will transform city billboards and benches into enigmatic word-puzzles. Navin Rawanchaikul will present his New Orleans I Love Taxi Project, similar to one created in New York in 2001 with the Public Art Fund. In New Orleans, he will interview taxi drivers and weave their tales into a comic book story that he will produce and print, then distribute in city taxis during the biennial.

A number of New Orleans-born and based artists have also been selected to participate in the biennial, among them Shawne Major, who is creating three large-scale wall hangings; Willie Birch, who will present a new series of drawings; and Croatian-born, New Orleans-based sculptor Srdjan Loncar, who will erect a sculptural pile of money in front of the Old U.S. Mint and encourage the public to carry some of it away in briefcases provided at the site.