In the great city of New Orleans, a citywide contemporary art exhibition called Prospect occurs every three years. 

The exhibition sees projects in a wide variety of venues spread throughout city. For residents and visitors alike, Prospect is an invitation to experience the city through the eyes of artists.

Each iteration of Prospect is organized by a leading voice in the curatorial field. This year the exhibition is of specific import for the Caribbean community as the exhibition is being co-directed by Jamaican Ebony G. Patterson and of the 52 exhibiting artists, fifteen were born in the Caribbean with one additional artist being of Caribbean descent. 

Ebony G. Patterson is one of Jamaica’s most successful contemporary artists. The 2023 Driskell Prize winner delivers her art through mixed-media, one of her most recent being “…things come to thrive … in the shedding … in the molting” when she took over parts of the New York Botanical Gardens in 2023.  Yet who can forget “of 72”, when she marched with blinged out coffins referencing the over seventy people who died or disappeared after the Jamaican Tivoli Riots in 2010 following the arrest of local don, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.  

This exhibition (Prospect.6), which starts on November 2, 2024, and runs for three months, is entitled ‘the future is present, the harbinger is home’.

To hear Patterson talk about the event is to understand that this exhibition is an international discussion which “presents a challenge to our perceptions of ‘home’ — it asks us to consider that what we hold dear about the places where we live may, in fact, share commonalities with places we’ve never considered. 

“This triennial is about decentering our understanding and viewing New Orleans through a lens that transcends North American narratives and anchors the city in a global discourse. New Orleans is a global place and reflects the fact that most of the world is occupied by people of colour. 

“What does it mean to think about places like New Orleans, as currently living in the future, rather than a future to come? And that places outside of this are actually behind,” said Patterson.

To assist the public in engaging in this discussion, both Patterson and co-director Miranda Lash, have invited a global group of artists to exhibit. In addition to the sixteen Caribbean artists referred to above, eight artists are based outside the US in locations as far as Malaysia and Vietnam. 

Miranda Lash remarked that “We are grateful to the artists of Prospect.6 for being part of a layered conversation around the environment, our human search for connection and vibrance, and the ways that New Orleans relates to their communities, histories, and visions for the future. 

“This triennial offers a critique and discussion of how people, communities, and regions like Louisiana have been and continue to be regarded as sites of extraction for resources and labour. At the same time, New Orleans offers profound insight into how culture, neighbourhoods, and deep histories tether us to people and places, even in the face of mounting challenges. We see this tension between attachments to home—however one defines it—and the shifting climate as one of the defining issues of our foreseeable future.”