Mending the Sky

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Image provided by New Orleans Museum of Art

Beili Lui's Mending the Sky

In the ancient Chinese fable of the goddess Nüwa, a great storm afflicts the world. Rising winds and bursting clouds, roaring thunder and the crack of lightening bring the trees to burst into flames and the animals to flee in panic. And then, the sky cracks open. From the tear, waters flow and flow, flooding the world and all of the people in it. Seeing the inevitable fate of mankind before her, the goddess, called mother of the world, began to mend the tear, using beautiful stones, reeds, and fire. Burnt and bedraggled, Nuwa returned to earth to begin a golden age, where all lived in harmony and prospered. 

In the New Orleans Museum of Art's first major exhibition since the city's months-long shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ten artists work from the premise of this story, inspired by the hope for rebuilding after calamity, and creating something better than we had before. Premiering new acquisitions from local and international artists, Mending the Sky addresses the complicated state of our world through themes of loss, uncertainty, recovery, healing, and hope through works across the fields of art, animation, and performance. 

Works include: an installation by Beili Lieu called "After All/Mending the Sky"; Firelei Baez's painting called "the trace, whether we are attending to it or not (a space for each other's breathing); Diedrick Brackens's weaving called "If you feed a river"; Heidi Hahn's painting "Burnout in Shredded Heaven 10"; Ana Hernandez's "A Sense of Memory" multi-media sculpture; Baseera Khan's "Braidrage" video performance; Thao Nguyen Phan's three-channel video "Mute Grain"; Jamilah Sabur's video installation "Un chemin escarpe/A steep path"; Brazilian artist Clarissa Tossin's "Where the River Meets the Sea" ; and Lorna Williams's intricate sculptural assemblage "Lore". NOMA.org.