UWM Student Union - Union Art Gallery - New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians

January 22-February 29
Exhibition Opening Reception: January 24
Exhibition Closing Reception : February 27, 5-8pm, with live music by Jazz Chant featuring Adekola Adedapo

Co-Sponsored by UWM Union Sociocultural Programming and the UWM Anthropology Department

The Mardi Gras Indian tradition emerged as a celebration practiced exclusively by African-Americans who drew on Amerindian, African, and West Indian rhythms and motifs to create a folk ritual that is unique to New Orleans. This exhibition is a 30 year retrospective visual history of the Black Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans through images interpreting African-American folk tradition in one particular region of Louisiana.

Exhibition photographer, J. Nash Porter was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and has shown at museums and galleries such as the Smithsonian Anacostia Museums, the Ritz Gallery, African American Museum of Life, Culture and History and various museums throughout Louisiana. His knowledgeable forays into the New Orleans urban environment and his familiarity with the tradition and many of the participants has allowed him to capture at close range the true essence and cultural flavor of this annual

ritual. The images Porter presents have been selected from his archive of thousands of negatives, which document over thirty-five years of the New Orleans Black Mardi Gras Indian experience. These photographs record for present and future generations, the myriad ways in which African Americans invoke their presence and spirit by reflecting Indian as well as African ancestry, creativity, and ritual concepts across time and generations.

Photo by J. Nash Porter

February 15, 4pm, Union Art Gallery
Gallery Talk with Exhibition Curator, Dr. Joyce Jackson, on Resistance Street Theater: The Black Indians of Mardi Gras

The concept of resistance theater and street warriors is inherent in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition. The street ritual, a reservoir of cultural expressions, is about the need and desire to resist the system while celebrating life in a dramatic kaleidoscope of color, costume, music, dance, and total revelry. Joyce Marie Jackson examines historical and recent incidents, suit design, musical and dance practices and explores how the tradition has emerged and persisted through the years, despite the unremitting struggle staged by the systemic power structure. Dr. Jackson will be joined by Mr. Ronald Lewis, Director of the House of Dance and Feathers Museum and organizer of the Choctaw Hunters Mardi Gras Indian Tribe.

* This exhibition was developed by Cultural Crossroads, Inc., a nonprofit community organization based in Baton Rouge, LA. *

* An Installation by Peck School of the Arts students will be on view in the
Atrium Gallery (across from the bookstore) *