Call to Disarm: Imprint
Currently on View at Borenstein Galleries, 511 Royal St., New Orleans
This work was part of a Prospect.2 Satellite Plotting Coordinates on building facade with Jana Napoli. For more information, please see: (http://www.onpiety.com/events/index.php)
Call to Disarm: Imprint, a site-specific installation for the building’s vestibule, this work springs from the act of collecting, in this case obituaries of New Orleans gunshot victims, and the culture of commemorative t-shirts which has arisen to honor those lost to violence. Gilbert says: “I was traveling in a group with a young man. His brother had been buried the day before – one of the many lost by gunshot on the street. When I returned home, I found and tore out the obituary in an insignificant gesture of commemoration and placed it next to my bed. The next day there was another lost soul torn from the pages, and then another, and another. Hundreds later, the stack is staggering. The TIMES PICAYUNE, since Katrina, no longer details ‘by gunshot’ in its obits.”
“By placing these obituaries in a backlit curtain that could be seen from the street, Gilbert hoped that people would have chance encounters with the work. Royal Street is a heavily pedestrian block, and as its in the French Quarter, many of the pedestrians are from out of town. If they stop and read a little, they will see a different New Orleans from the louche vacation spot they’ve come to enjoy.”
Robert Boyd, The Great God Pan Is Dead: New Orleans Coda
[…] list of names as well as collage of obituaries for victims in shooting. Call to Disarm, 6. From http://www.jangilbertart.com/wp/call-to-disarm-imprint/. With permission of Jan […]