This month marks the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. One of many deadliest storms in US historical past, it resulted within the loss of life of an estimated 1,400 individuals, in keeping with current authorities figures. An ongoing group present at Ferrara Showman Gallery in New Orleans explores how the storm modified the town and the native artwork scene, and the way artists have labored to reinvest in New Orleans within the twenty years since.
The gallery celebrated the opening for This Metropolis Holds Us earlier this month on White Linen Night time, New Orleans’s annual artwork block get together. Revelers wearing breezy summer time garments and handed by means of the 20 or so artwork galleries lining Julia Avenue within the metropolis’s historic Warehouse Arts District. Round 35,000 guests handed by means of that night, says gallery founder and companion Jonathan Ferrara, lots of them extra engaged with the present than typical.
“That was distinctive,” Ferrara tells The Artwork Newspaper. “It was actually an exquisite factor to see. It does not occur that usually.”
The exhibition, which invited artists to revisit their experiences throughout and after Hurricane Katrina, might have struck a chord with the native viewers. New Orleans, Louisiana’s most populous metropolis, was the toughest hit by the class 5 storm. Inside per week of its landfall on 29 August 2005, round 80% of New Orleans was underwater, in some areas as deep as 20ft, after its system of levees and floodwalls failed.
Whereas an estimated 80% of New Orleans’s residents evacuated earlier than the storm, 1000’s of the town’s most weak lacked transportation or assets to observe authorities’ short-notice evacuation orders. Many sought shelter within the Louisiana Superdome, the native indoor enviornment. Experiences of unsanitary situations, violence, crime and even loss of life turned the “shelter of final resort” into an emblem of the institutional failures that left New Orleans residents to undergo within the wake of Katrina. The Federal Emergency Administration Company (Fema), the federal government division charged with co-ordinating catastrophe response, was broadly criticised, prompting agency-wide reforms. (This week, US media retailers reported dozens of Fema staff have been placed on depart after warning in an open letter that US President Donald Trump’s cuts to the company threaten to undo these enhancements).
“We have been the canary within the coal mine with regard to large-scale pure disasters,” Ferrara says. “It confirmed a number of the inadequacies of the federal system on many alternative ranges.”
Work by artists Anastasia Pelias, Jonathan Ferrara (additionally the gallery’s founder) and Gina Phillips. Picture by Mike Smith, courtesy Ferrara Showman Gallery
Whereas the resilient metropolis has made important progress in rebuilding, restoration has been uneven—right this moment, the inhabitants remains to be under pre-Katrina ranges, particularly in traditionally Black neighbourhoods just like the Decrease Ninth Ward, which endured a number of the deadliest flooding.
When Ferrara and gallery director and companion Matthew Weldon Showman started considering the thought of a present devoted to the twentieth anniversary of the storm, they knew they needed to maintain the give attention to the progress New Orleans and its artists have made since Katrina, not on the imagery related to the destruction.
“What actually units us aside—and this has been the suggestions from our patrons—is that we’ve taken on this new perspective reasonably than trying again,” says Showman, who curated the exhibition. “We’re honouring the previous, nevertheless it’s triumphant and celebratory of how far we have come, and what we’ve nonetheless but to do within the metropolis.”
‘The expertise is a part of my make-up now and solely made me stronger’
This Metropolis Holds Us options work by ten artists who have been affected by Katrina. Showman had artists submit written testimonies reflecting on how the storm formed their lives and inventive practices. The multidisciplinary artist Anastasia Pelias, a New Orleans native, has a number of summary work on show.
“I hate revisiting the trauma of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath,” she wrote in her testimony. “The individuals of New Orleans weren’t protected by the powers that be, on this case the Military Corps of Engineers, who knew that our levees have been unstable and {that a} disastrous occasion was not only a chance, however was imminent… all the residents of New Orleans have been betrayed, however the pointedly inequitable therapy of various demographics—individuals in low-income neighbourhoods—instantly grew to become very clear. New Orleans was uncovered for its nice racial and socioeconomic disparities and divide.”
Katrina “shredded our complete ecosystem and infrastructure, not simply within the arts, however typically”, Ferrara says. “To start with, artists have been simply making an attempt to outlive. Folks weren’t targeted on shopping for artwork; they have been rebuilding their partitions.”
However slowly, from that wreckage, a starting-from-scratch mentality allowed some artists to reinvent their practices after the storm. Within the wake of destruction, some drew contemporary inspiration from New Orleans’s distinctive mix of Caribbean, French, West African and Southern cultural influences.
Fat Acquired Out (2025) by Gina Phillips Courtesy Ferrara Showman Gallery
“It was like residing in a petri dish—something was attainable, nothing was possible,” Ferrara says. “Those who stayed have been zealous. They have been those that stated: ‘I’m not leaving.’ And one of many issues that saved these individuals there was the tradition, the music, the meals, the artwork, the literature, all of these issues that make New Orleans an incredible place.”
The mixed-media artist Gina Phillips misplaced almost every little thing within the storm when her house studio flooded. Afterwards, she spent two years in a Fema trailer (a caravan that was speculated to be momentary shelter) and used a grant to buy a longarm quilting machine. This device allowed her to discover new themes—place, historical past, geography—in thread and cloth, impressed by New Orleans. “It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina—exhausting to consider. Additionally exhausting to consider I’m about to say this—however I wouldn’t change something,” Phillips wrote. “The expertise is a part of my make-up now and solely made me stronger.”
The photographer Trenity Thomas was solely six years previous when she evacuated. Her photos within the exhibition present acquainted New Orleans scenes, like shotgun home porches, second line avenue parades and the well-known Café Du Monde.
Aimée Farnet Siegel, one other artist featured within the present, solely started her artwork observe after the storm. She felt impressed within the wake of Katrina, when she “discovered a metropolis remodeled—scarred, resilient and decided”, Siegel wrote. What struck her most have been the T-shirts locals wore after Katrina. Some slogans on the shirts expressed indignation on the authorities’s negligence, whereas others used humour to poke enjoyable on the chaos. She gathered 81 of them for one more gallery present, a few of that are additionally on show at Ferrara Showman Gallery, with sayings like “I stayed in New Orleans throughout Katrina, and all I acquired was this awful T-shirt, a brand new Cadillac and a plasma TV” and “Make Levees, Not Battle”. Siegel later turned to portray, and three of her current canvases are included within the exhibition. “Very like my beloved New Orleans, my work is consistently altering and evolving, carrying inside it the ruins and the renaissance—proof that therapeutic, rebuilding and flourishing are attainable,” Siegel wrote.
Two work by Aimee Farnet Siegel, and t-shirts she collected within the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Picture by Mike Smith, courtesy Ferrara Showman Gallery
Most featured artists within the present are from or based mostly in New Orleans; solely the sculptor Paul Villinski will not be native. He visited shortly after Katrina in 2006 to scavenge supplies for his work, usually made with discarded objects. This present contains items constituted of vinyl data that Vilinski got here throughout within the Decrease Ninth Ward. The vinyl had been warped from hours sitting within the solar, the spherical heart labels rotted away. Villinski reshaped them into birds.
“In some methods, the storm propelled the artwork scene right here in New Orleans. The highlight on the town and the tragedy that occurred right here additionally invested public curiosity in what got here of the town afterwards,” Showman says.
Ferrara and Showman credit score Prospect New Orleans, the contemporary-art triennial that started in 2008 as a response to Katrina, as serving to reinvigorate artwork within the metropolis and even rising the artwork scene to past what it was earlier than the storm. (Prospect’s organisers introduced final month they might skip the 2027 iteration and publish an anniversary e-book as a substitute. It stays to be seen if future editions of Prospect New Orleans will happen).
“The highlight got here due to Katrina, which isn’t essentially what you need, however it’s what it’s,” Ferrara says. “We have now stood up underneath the highlight as an artist group.”
Different galleries and establishments throughout the larger New Orleans space are marking the anniversary with exhibitions as properly. The New Orleans Museum of Artwork is internet hosting A Time Earlier than Katrina (till 21 September), an exhibition of dense and richly detailed works on paper by Dapper Bruce Lafitte, an artist based mostly within the Decrease Ninth Ward. The New Orleans Academy of Advantageous Arts has teamed up with ArtsvilleUSA and the River Arts District Artists in Asheville, North Carolina, to placed on A Story of Two Cities (13 September-8 November), marking the anniversaries of each Hurricane Katrina and 2024’s Hurricane Helene—the deadliest storm to strike the continental US since Katrina. In the meantime, the New Orleans African American Museum is staging a year-long present referred to as The Katrina Checklist: An Untold Story of Hurricane Katrina (28 August 2025-30 August 2026), bringing collectively survivors’ testimonies, images, handwritten letters and salvaged objects to supply the general public an interactive memorial to the human affect of the storm.
This Metropolis Holds Us, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, till 13 September
