"Emptiness Ecologies" at Yes We Cannibal

Yes We Cannibal continues to raise the stakes for exhibiting genre-blurring, boundary-pushing art in Baton Rouge with the collective's highest-profile show to date: Emptiness Ecologies. Yes We Cannibal has curated the exhibition to explore the concept of "ecology," what it has come to represent in recent years as a means of speaking on social and environmental intersections, and to audit the concept of ecology as it relates to and deviates from our reality. The exhibition will feature two installations of works by influential Louisiana-based artists like multimedia oracle of the anthropocene Dawn DeDeaux, three collages by artist and Houma Nation storyteller Monique Verdin, and works by remote artists from around the world like Duke and Battersby of Syracuse, Anna Scime of Buffalo, Chihiro Ito of Brooklyn, and others. Thematic texts by Louisiana philosophers and scholars including Dr. John Clark and Courtney Taylor, as well as those by translator and novelist Laura Marris of Buffalo will also be included. yeswecannibal.org.

Yes We Cannibal will host the following programming alongside the exhibition in January:

January 8, 4 pm: Dharma Talk and Meditation: Musician and Zen practitioner Bill Kelley will give a talk on the Buddhist philosophical concept of emptiness or Śūnyatā, and lead a meditation. 

January 15, 4 pm: Musical Performance: Decorated composer Dr. Austin Franklin will perform Terra, a work he wrote in response to Mort Garson's 1976 electronic album Mother Earth's Plantasia, which was written with the intent of helping indoor plants grow and thrive. 

January 20, 8 pm: Musical Performance: The New Orleans-based Serpentine Choir utilizes sound installation to create an "activated space," collaborating with spirit and community to create transformative, healing spaces. 

January 22, 4 pm: Interview: Featured artists Emily Duke and Cooper Battersby make up The Infernal Grove, which is a project created with the intent of analyzing drug use, addiction, and recovery; uniting artists and writers with lived experience of drug use and providing an outlet to discuss relationships to substances and sobriety. 

January 29, 4 pm: A Conversation with Dr. John Clark and Dawn DeDeaux: Philosopher Dr. John Clark and multimedia artist Dawn DeDeaux, though they come from different professional backgrounds, are both long-time New Orleans residents who have made significant contributions to the perception of social ecology and other fields in the Gulf South. LSU Art History professor Dr. Allison K. Young will moderate the two in conversation.