CURRENT SHOW
CURRENT SHOW
Through the window
از پنجره
Opening Receptions: April 6th & May 4th from 6-9 PM
Artist Talk: May 4th at 7PM
OPEN FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS 12-5 PM
April 6th - May 25th, 2024
JAMMIN’ ON JULIA
April 6th 5-10 PM
Live Music in the Courtyard by Masoud Yeganegi 6-9 PM
Pop-up Persian Food by Babajoon 6-9 PM
About the show
Through the Window, a collection started by Sara Madandar in 2018. Across the numerous pieces, Sara talks about the relationship of humans to their bodies and body coverings, and how the body relates to notions of the home, place, belonging, and the public and private spheres. Through the use of imagery, she tells the story of her life—about joy and pain, oppression and resistance—finding a common thread within those stories to connect herself to the life stories of others. Having grown up in Iran, and later having moved to the United States, the tension of living in between cultures has been an ever-evolving inspiration for these themes. So within this exhibition, Sara has replicated an apartment complex in West Tehran that she grew up in. She points out at this location and each window within it to speak about different class societies, censorship, indoor and outdoor spaces and also what has happened after the Women Life Freedom movement in Iran.
Snips & Snails & Cautionary tales
Opening Reception February 3, 2024 6-9 pm
OPEN FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS 12-5 PM
February 3rd - March 30, 2024
About the show
Little boys are made of snips & snails & puppy dog tales. Old boys are made of leather-bound aches & a myriad of mistakes (attended, one hopes, by the merciful touch of grace). With my own Best Beloved in the crook of my arm, adventures were read aloud, and whole worlds were pulled from the ether. My children have grown beyond my elbow niche and spoken stories.
Still the storyteller remains, and though the clay is static, it retains the cadence of a nursery rhyme. The following is an example of my thought process in regards to my sculptural narrative. Lord of the Flies, depicts the head of the wild pig impaled on a spear in the book of the same name by William Golding. In the story, the Sow’s head represents a demon, The Lord of Flies and Dung. A personification to the protagonist, of a ferocious beast that can be hunted and slain. Ultimately it is understood to represent the beast within us all. Time and again I’ve F. Gump’d my way onto playing fields where stakes were thought high, hierarchies were firmly entrenched, and both the rules and barometers for success were clear. In this sculpture I’ve depicted the different paths that may lead to the gilded staircase at the pinnacle of this labyrinth. Babirusa boars have tusks that may grow back into its own skull eventually killing it. One of this boar’s eyes is blinded by a tusk, just as the rules of some games turn a blind eye to merit, or fairness. As a species, our greatest advances, and transgressions are born of these social accords. The boys stranded on the island, have devolved into murderous tribes, firmly enmeshed in this reality of their making. They are eventually rescued by a Naval Officer, who is himself at war. And so it goes. Like the boys in Golding’s book, sometimes we need an adult gaze to help us understand that it was only ever a game. The only question is who’s going to tell the adult?
Low Hustle Hot center:
Canal Street In Downtown New Orleans
Opening Reception December 2, 2023 6-9 pm
OPEN FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS 12-5 PM
December 2nd - January 27, 2024
About the show
The photographs of Low Hustle Hot Center: Canal Street in Downtown New Orleans, incorporate a wide array of photographic styles: from portraits to streetscapes to architectural studies, in both minute details and sweeping vistas. Crackling with energy, the exhibitions' and books’ images describe not just the physicality of the urban environment and its inhabitants (however fleeting), but also the complex psychological tone of the area, as well. His exhibit is also a part of PhotoNola.
Book Launch for low hustle hot center
Saturday, December 16, 2023, 6-9pm
Talk at 6:30 pm
The reception will include a book signing and a conversation with Jonathan Traviesa and contributing essayist Leslie-Claire Spillman.
unum ens
Opening Reception October 7, 6-9 pm
OPEN FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS 12-5 PM
October 7th - November 25th, 2023
About the show
A tool is defined by Marissa L. Greif in her book Tool Use and Casual Cognition as “any object wielded by the user that increases the extent of their physical interaction with the environment”. Throughout history we have used tools for a variety of reasons, but my favorite reason is the pursuit of understanding. Humans seem to coexist with the need to understand our environment, and that environment extends from the inner core of our Earth to the furthest point we can imagine in the universe. Our environment encompasses the vastness of space and time and all the things that have existed and lived within that, whether we’ve been able to perceive them.
Unum Ens is a world that expresses itself as a landscape with living forms who slowly crackle and break. When I first came here, I spent time trying to understand the connection between these two forms, their cracklings felt like a tool for communication. I walked around them, stood up close, and then further away, took pictures of them, listened closely. Through these slow interactions, I finally, painstakingly, figured out what they were. And in fact, I was on a world with just a single being, who had split in two, probably long ago. The cracklings, an echo of this rupture.
Through my exploration of worlds and beings, and through a process of thinking about the meaning of life and consistently questioning my beliefs, I have come up with a definition for life that feels open enough yet concrete enough to have it shape my practice. Life, as I define it, is anything whose absence would affect something else. This means that one needs another, each a witness to the other. Because of this, I believe that there were once more beings on Unum Ens, and when they all died, this being was forced to split to be a witness to itself.
But it can be a dangerous thing to prove your own beliefs.
I have created a tool, that I call Camera Revelatorium, that allows you, the viewer, to perceive this being for what it is, one. I have recorded the sounds of its echo and sped it up to match the rhythm of your viewership. Please remember, not all that we think we know is what it is, and simultaneously opposing truths are possible. I have learned.
freedom or death
Don’t miss the second opening of Freedom or Death, this Saturday September 2, from 5-9pm.
OPEN FRIDAY & SATURDAY 12 - 5 PM
August 5th - September 30th, 2023
About the show
Showcasing lens-based artworks from a series of Ukrainian photographers, guest curator Sasha Theodora seeks for the exhibition to display the r*ssian war in a wider scope and to contextualize Ukraine’s long fight for freedom. All funds raised throughout the exhibition will be donated to organizations supporting Ukraine, including The Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI), Save Ukraine, and Kharkiv-based Charity Fund "Volunteers: Adults - Children".
Through the eyes of five artists–Sasha Theodora, Arsenii Gerasymenko, Pavlo Dorohoi, Oleksii Furman, and Bohdan Poshyvailo–the exhibition organizers also hope to help bridge the gap of understanding about a culture that may not be well understood and to embolden desires for decolonization of the centuries-long r*ssification of Ukraine and Ukrainian culture.
Past Events:
August 16th, 7 - 9 PM Exhibition Walkthrough and Performance with Artist and Curator Sasha Theodora
This one-time, live experience is meant to enrich the exhibition’s vast showcasing of Ukrainian rituals and traditions. Video coming soon.
August 5th, 5 - 9 PM Opening in connection with White Linen Night, hosted by Arts District New Orleans (ADNO).
Freedom or Death: Welcome to Ukraine.
Don’t get it twisted.
We were never “little russians”.
We were never “being liberated”.
We will not be enslaved again. (1546-1890)
We will not be starved to death again. (1932-33)
Give back our children.
Leave the land you failed to steal.
Paws off, we’re not for the taking.
We receive protection from our ancestors, from our customs and traditions, from our culture.
From our language.
From our songs.
From our laughter.
From our symbols.
From the land.
From the rivers.
From linen.
From sunflowers.
“Freedom or Death” was a Cossack rallying cry, earliest found use of the cry was in the 15th century by the Black Sea Cossacks, fighting Muscovite and Polish oppression.
Yale sale
OPEN FRIDAY & SATURDAY 12 - 5 PM
July 15th - 30th, 2023
For two weeks only, Parlour Gallery presents a pop-up exhibition featuring works by the artist and curator Nic[o] Brierre Aziz. The lifelong New Orleans native will be pursuing a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Yale University School of Art this fall. As a celebratory send-off and fundraiser, the artist gathered works in print, collage, and mixed media from recent years as an offering to the community that has consistently shaped and been shaped by him.
Aziz’s candid gaze into the corrupt foundations of American history appears on full display–from photographs documenting the artist’s performance atop the former monument to PGT Beauregard to commercial branding-inspired prints commemorating forgotten victims of “white barbarism”. We are so excited for Aziz and look forward to seeing how this experience will advance his critical voice in projects to come.
Labor/Gesture/Labor/Gesture
OPEN FRIDAY & SATURDAY 12 - 5 PM
May 6th - June 30th, 2023
Labor is the product of millions of human gestures. Rhythmic or alone, silent or delivered, intended or involuntary, our movement and our words, our decisions in the spaces we move through, whether in real life or in the other world we’re building, have consequences.
Placed together, five incoming artists of Camp St. Studios provoke conversation about actions often taken for granted. While totally individual in their intention, medium and process, they can all simultaneously ask — what is the end product of the gestures you make?
01. Sara Madandar “Prayer Cloak”
A nude Iranian woman uses a typical Muslim prayer veil to cover her body and speak to issues of gender disparity and censorship.
02. Elivira Castillo “Amor Breathwork Therapy Session”
Cut to popular films of couples arguing, a live breath-work therapy session was curated and filmed in December 2022 for the artist to make peace with ideas of love, and witnessed past relationships.
03. Garima Thakur “you swim, you fly, you scream, you be”
Addresses, teeters, dissects but does not reconcile with the idea that pleasure and desire is placed in dichotomies -- the paradoxical form of sleaze, lusciousness and violence wrapped up together under linen sheets.
04. Varvara Degtiarenko “Barbara’s Game”
A film within a film, about a game of shadows on the beach devised by the artist when she was 6 years old as she struggled to adapt to a new life in the United States after moving with her family from Moscow, Russia. The game was documented by her mother using photography, collage, and expressive storytelling, exploring themes of tolerance, resilience and identity in order to give her child the gift of confidence and self-esteem. Upon discovering her mother's project nearly 20 years later, the artist returned to that healing space of the beach.
05. Theo Eliezer “Patty Cake”
Filmed in early May 2020, Patty Cake is a 20 minute long single channel video depicting a game of patty cake. Through the use of video and archive this work considers intimate proximity and fluctuating conditions of risk during an era of pandemic.
Video Descriptions
Tiny Flicks
OPEN FRIDAY & SATURDAY 12 - 5 PM
March 4th - April 29th, 2023
Tiny Flicks is an ephemeral exhibition featuring a selection of short videos viewed through a peephole.
The showing presents eleven different artists and a variety of film styles ranging from but not limited to: Film Noir, Realistic Documentaries, and even Moving Still Images.
06. Kelsey Scult “Slice”
An experimental film following a relationship born out of the violence of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile interwoven with a budding queer romance between a mortician and the granddaughter of the man she is embalming. SLICE explores how trauma calcifies in the body, how those who perpetuate violence are often survivors of violence themselves, the passage of intergenerational memory, and how new lovers can help heal and release the ghosts we carry.
07. Ruth Owens “Spring”
Home movies are cut to footage of the artist’s daughter singing a classic Nina Simone song.
08. Sally Heller “Aerial View”
Moving images are remixed from films made in New Orleans between 1926 and 1966 by the artist’s father and grandfather. They are pieces of family history and at the same time, the history of New Orleans. The images reveal a city that vacillates between eras, issues of race, and its unique culture.
09. Tom Walton “Painting Install”
The artist interacts with his paintings in new and disorienting ways.
10. Tabitha Nikolai “Shrine Maidens of the Unseelie Court”
Is a playable virtual environment for PC and Mac in which players investigate a strange suburban apocalypse and the queer possibilities for online life in the wreckage. Available free for download at tabithanikolai.itch.io, music by Ultrademon.
11. Nurhan Gokturk “Endless Bloom”
A cluster of flowers scatter and animate until they become a color field of deep magenta.
echoes + Shadows
OPEN FRIDAY & SATURDAY 12 - 5 PM
January 7th - February 26th, 2023
“Echoes and Shadows” is the inaugural exhibition at The Parlour Gallery at Camp Street Studios, a new studio and exhibition space located at 822 Camp Street, a historic Henry Howard building in the heart of the New Orleans Arts District. This multi-media exhibition will include paintings, drawings, photographs, and a site-specific audio-video installation made by the five founding artists who take inspiration from the nearly 170-year-old building. Each artwork in “Echoes and Shadows” considers the building’s known and unknown histories, its architectural significance to the City of New Orleans, and a critical perspective on the building’s legacy.