"Abolition Playground"
In kai lumumba barrow’s installation for Prospect New Orleans’s Artists for Public Memory Commission, dismantling oppression meets play
The neutral ground of Norman C. Francis Parkway—which until 2021 was Jefferson Davis Parkway—is a bustling pedestrian thoroughfare in Mid-City New Orleans. Besides joggers, dog walkers, and chatting neighbors, the stretch still contains a concrete elephant in the room: the large central pedestal that from the time of Jim Crow until May of 2017 housed a monument to the president of the Confederacy.
As of September 22, there’s a new addition to the space at the intersection of Norman C. Francis Parkway and Bienville Street, and its proximity to the dismantled monument isn’t an accident. A new gravel and board walking path cuts through the grass, periodically interrupted by eclectic blocks of reclaimed doors, shutters, and windows. Often these structures block the path entirely. Interaction is encouraged and unavoidable in such an open public space, so pedestrians ambling along the path might try a doorknob to get through—some are locked, some aren’t. There is always a way forward, whether contorting through a window or circumnavigating the path entirely. This is Abolition Playground by kai lumumba barrow, the first installation to be unveiled from Prospect New Orleans’s Artists of Public Memory Commission.
Prospect New Orleans, the only arts triennial of its kind in the United States, brings contemporary artists from across the globe to New Orleans for the city-wide exhibition that takes place every three years. During the early planning stages of the most recent triennial, Prospect.5 in 2021, it occurred to Prospect’s Executive Director Nick Stillman that the organization had an opportunity to support works relevant to themes of monumentality, made all the more relevant by the context of the recently-removed Confederate statues. Some of those works have since become permanent installations—including EJ Hill’s A Monumental Offering of Potential Energy at Joe W. Brown Park, and Paul Stephen Benjamin’s Sanctuary at the New Orleans African American Museum.
“So those pieces became monuments in the city that are still present,” explained Prospect’s Deputy Director Taylor Holloway. Prospect’s intention in commissioning them, Holloway explained, was to support artists of color to create public monuments in spaces that are frequented by and accessible to communities of color.
When those projects were completed, Prospect allocated funding to create more public works centered around themes of monuments, memorials, and public memory—this time, specifically by Louisiana artists.
While Prospect is highly regarded in the art world—”we work to launch the careers of contemporary artists in America. It's literally what we do,” Holloway said—New Orleanians’ feedback about past triennials has been that not enough emphasis was placed on Louisiana artists and stories. Thus, the Artists for Public Memory Commission was born, providing funding for three public installations in New Orleans, each by local artists.
“Wow, we're in the phase of how do we get these pieces up? And then, how do we get different audiences to engage with the work?"—Prospect New Orleans Deputy Director Taylor Holloway.
Besides Abolition Playground, the two other upcoming projects funded by the Artists for Public Memory Commission are an earthen intertribal mound that will be built by an intertribal collective of individuals from Louisiana and Mississippi on the Lafitte Greenway including Dr. Tammy Greer, Ida Aronson, Jenna Mae,Ozone 504, and Monique Verdin; and an outdoor photography exhibit by Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun called Memoirs of the Lower Ninth Ward, which will be displayed in the neutral ground of Claiborne Avenue near Flood Street and Fats Domino Avenue.
“Right now, we're in the phase of 'how do we get these pieces up?'” Holloway asked. “And then, how do we invite different audiences to engage with the work? …and doing a lot of the things that we normally do for the triennial, but also kind of doing things differently, because these artists are all from this place, these projects are referential to this place. The partnerships, processes, and programming is all hyper-local.”
kai lumumba barrow’s Abolition Playground is part of a larger, ongoing project called [b]REACH: adventures in heterotopia, which the artist is developing with her evolving network of artists, activists, cultural workers, and others called Gallery of the Streets. Breech as a whole is based on Black fugitivity, inspired by the 1974 Bedford Hills uprising in New York, when a group of incarcerated women revolted in response to the beating of fellow inmate Carol Crooks by prison guards.
Breech imagines what might happen if those prisoners escaped following their uprising. “And along the way, they have these adventures. And the ‘Abolition Playground’ is, in fact, one of the places where they would go, where they wind up, and meet other allies and guides and engage in communications exchange, and that sort of thing,” said barrow.
Abolition Playground confronts the idea of monuments first by nature of its location, blocks away from the empty pedestal that once held the monument to Jefferson Davis. This choice was inspired in part by the concept of “hauntology,” the idea that aspects of our cultural and social history linger unseen and influencing the present, like a ghost.
“I was interested in how can we work with the actual facts and history of a place that's constantly changed and being redefined, and we're still here. And what’s to come? What do we do with it next?” barrow said, describing the project of removing Confederate monuments as “unfinished”. The narrative of the installation she leaves to the individual engaging with it, opening up the doors for discovery and new-world building through the philosophy of play—derived in part from watching her new five-year-old grandson’s creativity emerge on a playground. “And so, this idea of play, of having the freedom to problem solve creatively, to work cooperatively, to use our bodies as well as our minds . . . The playground, or play space, has that potential for creative exploration.”
As an artist and in her personal life, barrow also finds it helpful, even healing, to find laughter and levity in the face of tragedy. “There's still a moment where you laugh,” barrow said. “I'm just really trying to, as an artist, explore the other side of crisis. The other side of trauma.”
“I was interested in how can we work with the actual facts and history of a place that's constantly changed and being redefined, and we're still here. And what’s to come? What do we do with it next?” —kai lumumba barrow
“I wanted that space, particularly because of its history. Because I felt like it was an unfinished project, the removal of this monument,” barrow said. “I don't think that it was as intentional about challenging the questions of this Confederate landscape as it could have been…There's so much more conversation about what a monument is, what a marker is, that it's not just ‘take down the statue.’ It’s so much more complicated than that. So that was what really drew me to that space. And then I wasn't sure what story I wanted to tell, or how I'm going to tell the story.”
The story and structure emerged the more she walked up and down the space, looking at the area and the surrounding community. As for what that narrative is, she leaves that up to the individual experiencing it, to determine through play. “What is the play that you can engage in, when you walk those three blocks?”
“Those are the takeaways: that people actually play in the playground. You make things up in a playground,” barrow said. She has a brand new grandbaby, and another who recently turned five. “I spend some time hanging out with his older brother in playgrounds, parks. Because he's like, ‘Grandma, let's go play!’ So when we're in these playgrounds, those stories that he makes up are really interesting. And then I'm trying to make up a story, I'm trying to meet his creativity. He's in a whole other world. So I think that's what playgrounds allow you to do, you know?”
As light as the concept of play and playgrounds may seem on the surface, barrow uses it as a tool to explore deeper matters of social justice, like the prison industrial complex, and who our urban environments serve. In her speech at the unveiling, she referenced Collin Ward’s thought that you can tell the decay of an urban environment by the amount of playgrounds and parks it contains. “Every place should be a playground and park,” barrow explained. “But that can’t exist in a society that thrives on carcerality.”