Gaia’s Exorcism of Plantation Alley
Exorcism — the expulsion or attempted expulsion of a supposed evil spirit from a person or place.
What evil the west has wrought upon these lands once sacred to cultures long eradicated by disease, murder and famine? There’s a wind here, a breeze or a long sigh of anguish. The river has been scoured here, the land stretched and punished for natural diversion when people were forced to labor the lands on the other side of the levee. A revolution of manservants from Laplace to New Orleans, fed up with their conditions and imprisonment. Plantations replaced by refineries, spewing chemicals into the air. This stretch of road to Baton Rouge is called Plantation Alley.
There are multiple projects I’m working in various states of completion but the one that draws me now is simply entitled Exorcism. It’s a fantasy of nature consuming works of crimes against man and crimes against nature, perpetrated by the greed of capitalism.
The context of settings has changed throughout the decades. Oak Alley and Whitney Plantations remind their guests throughout tours and exhibitions of the forced labor of blacks and their atrocious conditions but these places, for this project, are representations of its dark pasts rather than what they may mean today.
My emotions are invested in this project. I’m allowing my heart and mind to guide me through the complicated feelings I have for this area. I can at once admire the haunting beauty of Spanish Moss dangling off the branches of Oak Trees and towering Cypress Trees meandering the curvature of the Mississippi River, the fine architecture of large mansions on antebellum estates but also experience dread like described by those who feel the presence of ghosts.
I anticipate the completion of this project ending at ten final images. My hope is that you experience the imagery and feel this place, this fantasy, these souls.
