Marjetica Potrč: New Orleans
Three of four diptychs: original drawings, ink on paper and inkjet print, 2007

»New Orleans« is a series of four diptychs that join prints and drawings. Using photographs of wetlands and drawings, the diptychs articulate the interdependence between water and the city of New Orleans. The photographs show the region's sinking territory, while the drawings reflect on the role of communities, democracy, and self-sustainability in the 21st century. The drawings are based on archetypal images - a head, a vase, a tree, and a flower - in combination with writing. The text juxtaposes the strategies of communities in places where I have done research over the past few years, namely, in New Orleans, the Western Balkans, Acre in Amazonia,and the Barefoot College in India. Common to all these places is their self-reinvention after the breakdown of 20th-century modernism. The »New Orleans« diptychs were made as part of my research as a fellow of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School in New York in 2007.

Marjetica Potrč: New Orleans — Settlement and The Return to Archetype

A line in the drawing says: 'After International Style - architectural archetypes. They make sense to us. They are local knowledge.' The statement refers to the shotgun house, part of the vernacular architecture of New Orleans, which is being embraced again by city residents as a mainstream architectural typology after the devastation

of Hurricane Katrina. The drawing shows the flamboyant hairstyle of a young woman, mapping some of the strategies that have come to the surface in the rebuilding of society in post-Katrina New Orleans, specifically examining the tensions between closed and open societies. These strategies are further illustrated with different

architectural typologies from Amazonia and the Western Balkans, places where I have recently done research.

Collection: Lah, Ljubljana

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Artist's web page: www.potrc.org