By now, Prospect.6 has packed its things and returned to hibernation until the triennial’s next glossy installment peppers the town with empty promises and a couple of decent art shows. As usual, for all their conceptual big talk, the artwork hardly seemed to register in the local cultural conversation. But I was party to some interesting conversations that Prospect inspired around the elite institutionalization of art, and what their pattern of inclusion reveals about the story that these gatekeepers are telling. Ahead of Prospect.6’s opening, ANTIGRAVITY art columnist Emily Farranto and I spoke about what options are available to those who aren’t among the international art world’s chosen few, and how to make the work successful regardless. We agreed that renegade artists will always have access to a kind of power that no institution can bestow, whose source is the act of creation itself.
I can think of no one who embodies this ethic more than R Kay, the New Orleans underground writer and artist who for decades has been creating singular, beautiful work that’s kept him far too busy to scheme his way into a high-profile art career. He has self-published at least a dozen works of fiction, and creates so much art with so little ego, that in an age where narcissism and self-promotion have total carte blanche, it’s almost startling. If you click on the “author bio” section of his website, you will find only a black-and-white picture of him in shades, leaning against his truck with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, casually holding out the most enormous turtle you’ve ever seen, monstrous jaws open wide. The caption reads “R Kay… is no one you want to know.”
R Kay has sustained his uncompromising air of mystery the old-fashioned way—that is, by finding a day job that he doesn’t feel an urgent need to quit. For decades, he’s worked at the Audubon Zoo, where his domain is the Louisiana Swamp Exhibit. There, evidence of his irrepressible creativity is everywhere. The exhibit has been curated as if it were deep in the swamps in 1937, right before the nutria took over and two years after the death of Huey Long. Then, the still-thriving swamp offered a way of life unlike any other for South Louisianans, and R Kay has done everything possible to bring that world to life. In one lagoon, a sign on a boat dock reads, “Church Landing.” Beneath the sign a Virgin Mary smiles beatifically at the center of an altar there to receive the first Sunday prayers of those waiting for the boat to take them to church. The Louisiana black bears frolic around a Cajun net mender’s hut, the racoons have their run of an old cypress outhouse, a turtle in the pond lurks beneath a swimming hole pier where a pair of flip flops has been abandoned, and a sign reading “no rules” has been scratched out and replaced with one that says “no diving.”
For the pièce de résistance, a journey through an indoor reptile (etc.) exhibit takes you to the leucistic alligators Victor and Two-Spot (and their alligator snapping turtle friend, Ti Boy), whose pigmentation condition (not to be confused with albinism) graces them with pale skin and eerie blue eyes, leaving them too vulnerable to survive in the wild for long. They came to Audubon through some swamp people antics at the end of which they were lucky enough to fall into the hands of R Kay, who honored them with the finest of all his zoo installations. On one side, a sign advertises the catch of the day for an Isleños fisherman (who’s “gone by dusk”), but quickly the eye turns to a red glow coming from a hut in the back, where the white alligator habitat has been transformed into a magically activated swamp witch display. The alligators, you see, are the moonlight familiars of the witch Nalusa, a caretaker of mysterious creatures, guardian of pirate’s treasure, and protectress of the swamp, which, her open diary tells us, is threatened by those who want to “exploit, destroy, and DRAIN the swamp.” The exhibit is humming with magic—in her treasures, her creature friends, and a swamp monster lying in wait close by. I defy anyone to resist credulously asking the benediction of these obviously supernatural alligators.
Say what you will about Ron Forman (and boy, I’ve said it), the man encouraged this strange sorcery to grow wild in the swamp within a swamp at the end of Magazine Street, and that’s a beautiful thing—a New Orleans thing. For in what other zoo can you turn the corner and come face to face with a 10-foot, handmade, glowing-eyed swamp werewolf snarling at you from behind plexiglass, with a placard detailing the history of the loup garou beside it? While nowhere in this exhibit is biological science anything but revered, the artwork here allows the very premise of zoos to transcend the otherwise unavoidable predicament of portraying animals like lab specimens. R Kay highlights the way that ecosystems are greater than the sum of their parts, a truth wherein all magic lies.
It’s bold to put so much heart into art installations in places where you wouldn’t normally find them, and cultivate the imaginations of visitors in ways that rouse them from their walking slumber. It’s subversive. In a world where authorized art is costly and ego-driven, and articulates itself in arcane language as inaccessible to non-elites as Latin in the Catholic Church, artists like R Kay are the maroons who take their chances in the wild. The best of them know that renegade artists have to stick together, that it’s the easiest way to be brave. When I mentioned I’d like to review his exhibit, he emailed me to clarify that he didn’t do it alone—when the budget was approved for the project, he was quick to recruit the homies. Jesse Roadkill did a bas-relief, Rick Rothrock did a marble sculpture of a white alligator tooth, Diane Madden did the introductory graphics, Mike Massimi sponsored a swamp conservation graphic and keeps R Kay “scientifically legit.” To make rebellious art it takes a whole maroon village, and I’m grateful to my new favorite zoo wizard for the reminder that these villages are everywhere, hiding in plain sight.
To see Nalusa and her leucistic familiars, head to your local library for free entrance to the Audubon Zoo through the Culture Pass (nolalibrary.libcal.com/passes). For more info on R Kay, check out rkbooks.com.
Photo by Romain Beauxis
