Mitoloji Latannyèr / Mythologies Louisianaises

A collection of art and storytelling, with a foundation entrenched in Louisiana's heritage languages

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Stepping through the gallery entrance at Baton Rouge's Capitol Park Museum for the exhibition Mitoloji Latannyèr / Mythologies Louisianaises, visitors are abruptly transported into a haze of Louisiana’s bayous, replete with ambient swamp sounds, moody green walls, and visions of towering trees and palmettos overlaid against the single window in the exhibition space.

Then, there are the voices. A disembodied cacophony echoes across the dimly lit gallery, louder the further in you drift, reciting poetry, folktales, and local myths in various languages. The tide of telling swells, at times surging together and then breaking apart into individual recitations as you approach specific exhibits. 

This tangled hum of Louisiana-specific languages against the aural backdrop of a lively swamp is the evocative concept at the heart of Mitoloji Latannyèr / Mythologies Louisianaises,  an exhibition currently on display at the Capitol Park Museum through the end of October 2024. Curated by Jonathan “radbwa faroush” Mayers, a Louisiana Creole visual artist, writer, and language activist, the exhibition features more than forty artworks accompanied by texts displayed in Louisiana and International French, Kouri-Vini (Louisiana Creole), and English, plus a special tale in Tunica. 

"In artwork, always share your interests and help to create the world that you want to see, rather than just allowing everything to be as is. Because art and literature can be catalysts for change and healing, too.” —Jonathan “radbwa faroush” Mayers

Mayers, whose artwork and poetry are also featured in the exhibition, plays on the themes of loss and grief with his selections—a dispossession of language, land, and self he argues have arisen from the forced Americanization of different Louisiana cultural groups. The selections of art and writings reflect the fears and rage associated with environmental devastation; there are calls for social justice, bids for freedom, and desperate hangings-on to pasts and people that no longer exist. These motifs are retold and reclaimed through Louisiana’s heritage languages, repossessing identities often rendered taboo by assimilation.

“For me, what inspires me about my art is really the culture that we live in here in Louisiana and also our heritage languages and what comes with that,” said Mayers. “Whether that be identity and understanding our sense of place and the space we live in, but also our views of the world.  I find that understanding our heritage languages and speaking them and using them in public spaces also gives us a voice that we can be proud of.”

One of the first works on display is a poem by Lafayette spoken word artist Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson titled, “Mo Kréyol (I am Creole)” which describes her grandmother’s shame for her native tongue of Kouri-Vini, a language she refused to pass down to her granddaughter. The rejection ultimately erased a critical part of their Creole identity, though it survived in other ways, the poem suggests, such as through the sanctity of oral tradition and shared knowledge of cooking practices. The poem is paired with a painting titled “The Flowers Were Clipped But the Roots Remained,” by Lafayette artist Chase Julien. It depicts a young girl—presumably of Creole heritage—seated, reading a book with a disgruntled expression while her black hair, partially composed of a vining flower in vivid purple hues, is trimmed by light-skinned hands. 

Other artwork leans into the aura of myth that permeates Louisiana culture. The story of “Le Loup-Garou,” written by St. James Parish-raised writer Beverly Matherne, tells the tale of misbehaving children cast out of their home in the Atchafalaya Swamp at night and brought face-to-face with the monstrous werewolf. It is accompanied by a hulking mixed media artwork by New Orleans artist Demond Matsuo titled “Loup Garou,” featuring the fearsome creature against a pitch-black backdrop, a ghostly skeleton looming above. 

[In 2021, Jonathan Mayers was the Baton Rouge Poet Laureate, and shared a poem, in English and Kour-Vini, with Country Roads.]

In another piece by Mayers himself, a poetic short story is paired with a painting by the same name: "Cornes de Brouillasse venant du Lac Péigneur (Foghorns on Lake Peigneur)”. The story tells of the 1980 environmental disaster in Lake Peigneur, north of Delcambre, when a TEXACO oil drill bit struck a salt dome, leading to a whirlpool that swallowed eleven barges. In his fictional version of the story, he writes of careless government workers in 2015 attempting to disrupt the lake again, leading to a giant, mythic monster of salt and mud rising from the water and hurling a tugboat and two barges onto land. The accompanying acrylic painting, created with Lake Peigneur sediment and suspended over a draped fish net, captures the moment the gargantuan, sharp-toothed mud monster rises from the impossibly blue lake and tosses the three offending vessels across the water.

The ever-present past, along with a compulsion to relive it and reinscribe it in an effort to regain control over its failures, also features prominently in the exhibition. In one notable coupling, Beverly Matherne’s poem “Pentimento de Vivien” tells of a husband who paints his dead wife over and over again on the same canvas, desiring that she grow old with him on paper. The side-by-side painting by New Orleans artist Elise Toups, titled “Arthur and Ernestine, Pentimento on Dauphine,” captures Arthur at work in his yard, painting his long-dead wife as ghostly versions of her face and body populate the canvas in bold, rich colors in a surreal scene of a joyful haunting.

[Read this artist profile of Jonathan Mayers from our November 2019 issue.]

First displayed in part in 2018 at Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, Mitoloji Latannyèr / Mythologies Louisianaises came to the Capitol Park Museum in October 2023. Mayers hopes a third iteration of the exhibition—an expansion—will one day come to life, and that the exhibition will remove some of the stigma around heritage languages and foster appreciation for Louisiana identities pushed to the margins. Already, educational programs in partnership with the exhibition focusing on these languages have begun to revive and celebrate the languages on display, such as a Kouri-Vini immersion program held this past summer. 

“Never be afraid to speak and present your language in public, in front of people who may be scared of what they don’t know,” Mayers said. “And also in artwork, always share your interests and help to create the world that you want to see, rather than just allowing everything to be as is. Because art and literature can be catalysts for change and healing, too.” 

Mitoloji Latannyèr/Mythologies Louisianaises will be on display at the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge through October 23. See more of Mayers's work at jonathanmayers.com.