New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University and Antenna with collaborating partners launches Insurgent Ecologies, an exhibition featuring artwork by thirty-four artists, collaborative projects, and initiatives across the Mississippi watershed.  Co-curated by Imani Jacqueline Brown and Shana M. griffin, Insurgent Ecologies opens Saturday, April 8 at Antenna Gallery and 3OneOne6 Gallery, and runs until Sunday, May 28, 2023.

New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University (NOCGS) and Antenna, in collaboration with the Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange, PUNCTUATE,  Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University, and the Gulf South Open School  are excited to announce the opening of Insurgent Ecologies: Resisting Watersheds of Conquest, Enslavement, and Extraction Along the Mississippi River, an art exhibition at Antenna Gallery and 3OneOne6, on Saturday, April 8, from 6 - 9 pm.  Insurgent Ecologies, co- curated by Imani Jacqueline Brown and Shana M. griffin, features thirty-nine artists and projects along the Mississippi River. 

The exhibition engages artwork, projects, and collaborative initiatives across the Mississippi watershed that disrupt systems of racial enslavement, coloniality, displacement, and industrial encroachment, which rupture space-time to form a “continuum of extractivism.” Insurgent Ecologies  interrogate common assumptions and false solutions while imagining new ecologies that can repair the violence of the “plantationocene”.

This exhibition, public programming, and print project  reflects on-going collaborations between activists, scientists, visual,sound, and interdisciplinary artists, and scholars to understand the intersections of climate change, colonialism, and extraction up and down the Mississippi River. Insurgent Ecologies is the latest iterative project inspired by the Anthropocene River Campus, the upriver Overflow exhibition, the Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange, and the Anthropocene Commons.

The Anthropocene Commons grew out of the 10-year Anthropocene Curriculum initiative, which since 2013 has reflected on the ways communities around the world understand and respond to the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Curriculum project was organized by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. In 2017, HKW instigated Mississippi. An Anthropocene River (2017-2019) and seeded 5 field stations along the river. NOCGS was invited to co-organize and host the culmination of this two-year experiment, Anthropocene River Campus (2019). The Gulf South Open School (GSOS) comprises six organization-based projects in this region. They are the following: Civic Studio (Katie Fronek and Aron Chang), PUNCTUATE (Shana M. griffin), New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (Rebecca

Snedeker and Denise Frazier), Dillard University (Amy Lesen), Land Memory Bank and Seed Exchange (Monique Verdin), and Antenna (Monica Mejia Restrepo).

Featured artists, collaborative projects, and initiatives include:

Ana Hernandez

Andrea Carlson

AnnieLaurie Erickson

Beatte Giessler, Mat Rappaport, and Oliver Sann

Brandon Ballengée

Brian Holmes and Jeremy Bolen

CFreedom

Civic Studio and The Water Leaders Institute

Geography of Robots

Hannah Chalew

Imani Jacqueline Brown

Jennifer Colten

Jessi Parfait

John Kim

Juan Carlos Quintana

kai lumumba barrow

Kayla Anderson, Sara Black, Amber Ginsburg, Sarah Lewison, and Claire Pentecost

Kira Akerman

Les Cenelles (Joseph Darensbourg, Demi Ward, Peter J. Bowling, and Denise Frazier)

localStyle (Marlene Novak, and Jay Alan Yim) in collaboration with Mak Hepler-Gonzalez

Matthew Rosenbeck

Michael Ifeoma Esealuka 

Monica Moses Haller

Monique Verdin

Nic[o] Brierre Aziz

Rebecca Snedeker

Renee Royale

Ron Bechet

Sarah Kanouse, Ryan Griffis, Corinne Teed, Heather Parrish, and Jon Lund

Shana M. griffin

Steve Rowell

Tia-Simone Gardner

Insurgent Ecologies will be accompanied by an opening reception on Saturday, April 8,  6 - 10 pm, and will be on view at Antenna, located at 3718 St. Claude Ave, and 3OneOne6, located at 3116 St. Claude Ave., until  Sunday, May 28, 2023. Public programming will include panel discussions, workshops, and more.

For more information, contact New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University at gulfsouth@tulane.edu and 504-314-2854.