NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) –A new exhibit at Preservation Hall shows the importance of humanity in both black and black LGBTQ musicians. The exhibition is called, Presence and Precarity: A Louisiana Fairytale.
Since the 1960’s, Preservation Hall has been an anchor for jazz, New Orleans culture and African American artistry. The goal of the exhibit, is to show that there is more to a musician than the music they make on stage.
Nic[o] Brierre Aziz is a guest curator of the exhibit and says, “sometimes the community doesn’t value the bodies of the expressers, as much as the actual expression. I think this exhibition creates a lot of questions for people, of what it means to express yourself creatively in this city but also having to deal with some the issues of this city and America as a whole.”
Felicita Felli Maynard is one of the exhibition artists and says, “there’s a beauty in understanding the level of culture bearing at that time of the 1960’s and earlier. A lot of the work I am looking to do on the contemporary level, is to honor and acknowledge those early folks and give them a space in the larger candid of history.”
The collection blends Preservation Hall Foundation archive photography and posters, with glass plate and tin type contemporary photography from inspired creatives such as Felicita Felli Maynard.
“This portrait my self, is a double exposure that looks into the past, while looking into the future. It’s made using the same process from the 1850’s called wet plate collodion. I used a historical form of photography as a direct conversation with both the past and the future,” says Maynard.
One of the three exhibition rooms is reimagined as a dressing room of two black drag performing artists from the early 1900’s. It’s a narrative that aims to illuminate, not only the contributions of African Americans but promote representation.
Kelly Porter is the Preservation Hall Foundation Archives Project Manager and says, “we lose records of a lot of people and this room here, is about the things we don’t have. It’s us dreaming up something in the place of these lost records. It’s also about how black music and culture has gone around the world and changed it in a really profound way.”
Presence and Precarity: A Louisiana Fairytale; will be on display at Preservation Hall, through the Juneteenth national holiday, on select Sundays.
