Floodwall
January 4 – February 9, 2007
On the Liberty Street Bridge of the World Financial Center
Moved to action by the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans artist Jana Napoli collected hundreds of drawers from the flooded and abandoned neighborhoods in the days and months that followed.
In this site-specific installation, the drawers sit upright along a 230 foot long platform, which spans the length of Liberty Street Bridge – standing like empty luggage without their passengers and flowing like a levee, broken in places. Beneath the drawers, placed in intervals along the platform, moving-message LED signs silently repeat the words of the people who have parted with these drawers. Their words reminisce and mourn:
“I thought New Orleans would be a good place to go for rain and history, and it was.” . . . . “Having to throw your furniture out in front of your house -- your life is sort of taken from you and sort of dumped out in your front yard.” . . . . “New Orleans was here before America was here and we are a part of America.”
Floodwall was Co-presented by Arts World Financial Center
Floodwall’s New York exhibit is designed by Whirlwind Creative
Partners & Donors
Anonymous, Lyndon & Jeannine Sherman Barrios, The Borenstein Family, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Caribe Cultural Foundation, Oral History Association's Emergency Crisis Oral History Research Fund, Environmental Restoration & Cleaning, Logical Things, Inc., Oreck Corporation, Patrice Powell, Pinkley, Inc., Robert and Melissa Soros, Monica Stevenson Photography, The T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, Shirley Thompson Editorial, University of New Orleans, Young Aspirations/Young Artists, Inc. (YA/YA), The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
