Nari Ward
b. 1963, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica
Lives in New York
VENUEs
New Orleans African American Museum
1418 Governor Nicholls Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Wednesday–Sunday, 11 AM–4 PM*
*Audio plays every hour, on the hour. Duration: 15 min.
previously stationed at
823 N Claiborne Avenue
December 10–20, 2021
UNO Gallery
November 6–December 10, 2021
neighborhood
Eighth Ward/St. Roch/Faubourg Marigny
About the project
Battle Ground Beacon, 2021
Refashioned portable light tower and audio equipment
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin
Best known for his sculptures and installations, Nari Ward transforms everyday objects through unexpected juxtapositions and an emphasis on material, labor, and location. Having taken part in Prospect.1, Ward returned to New Orleans for Prospect.5 to create Battleground Beacon. The title references both the Battleground Baptist Church in the Lower Ninth Ward—the site where the artist worked in 2008—and the portable police floodlights from which the work is made. Instead of illuminating and surveilling spaces, the lights have been replaced by megaphones that amplify sound, becoming a beacon of communication to the public that affirms Black life and calls for social equity and justice.
The sound is based on the artist’s 2008 audio piece that played inside the church, and features speeches by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as Buddhist chanting by Tina Turner. The artist has transformed this older work by adding a cacophony of new voices, ranging from important historical figures such as writers James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka and congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, to contemporary voices including scholar Cornel West and Amanda Gorman, the young poet who read at the 2020 Presidential Inauguration. Layered with ambient sounds of water and machinery, and woven together by Turner’s chants, the resulting composition calls to account ongoing racial violence and interrogates the fractured state of our nation. Ward has described this work as a “call to prayer.” It is also a call to consciousness and action. It is a call to, as Angela Davis has said, “dedicate ourselves to collective resistance.”
Sound composition by Andres Levin and Moisés Sacal Hadid (recorded at Tribe Caribe CDMX, Mexico City)
Experience the Battleground Beacon audio below:
about the artist
Nari Ward’s sculptures incorporate a wide range of found objects, including strollers, shoelaces, obsolete technology, and fire hoses, juxtaposed to create evocative yet open-ended installations. Through his materials, Ward raises questions about race, class, and consumption, and about how traces of these social phenomena are evidenced in everyday objects. Ward participated in Prospect.1 (2008–9) and has been invited to return to New Orleans with this history in mind. Recent exhibitions of his work include Nari Ward: We the People, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (both 2019), and Nari Ward: Sun Splashed, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017), Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2016), and Pérez Art Museum Miami (2015). Ward has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the United States Artists Fellowship Award (2020), Vilcek Prize in Fine Arts (2017), and the Joyce Award (2015). Ward received a BA from the City University of New York, Hunter College (1989), and an MFA from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College (1992).
Nari Ward, Battle Ground Beacon, 2021. Refashioned portable light tower and audio equipment, 354 x 112 x 130 inches. Installation view: Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. 823 N Claiborne Avenue, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photo: Alex Marks
Nari Ward, Battle Ground Beacon, 2021. Refashioned portable light tower and audio equipment, 354 x 112 x 130 inches. Installation view: Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. University of New Orleans St. Claude Art Gallery, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photo: Jose Cotto