New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy
This publication is the culmination of seven years’ worth of research, education projects, performances and exhibitions of Torres-Tama’s exploration of the free people of color in New Orleans.
Les gens de couleur libres are considered the first multiracial people in the United States, borne of an illegal but tolerated mixing between the French, Spanish and African races of colonial Louisiana. This visual history project celebrates the legacy of New Orleans’ hybrid caste and their cultural and political contributions. José Torres-Tama’s colorful and expressionistic pastel portraits on paper identify a 19th century Creole intelligentsia of artists and activists who fought to dismantle the institutional prejudices of their times.
Torres-Tama’s book titled New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy documents the exhibition of the same name. The art book was funded with the support of the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New York. Other arts organizations who have supported the development of the Free People of Color series include Alternate ROOTS and the Highlander Research Center through their We Shall Overcome Fund. The book contains biographical notes on each individual portrayed and a time line of New Orleans colonial history, both written by Creole historian Keith Weldon Medley.
The book is available for purchase at the Ogden Museum store in New Orleans and numerous bookstores across the Crescent City including the Community Bookstore and Faubourg Marigny Art & Books. Online it is available at www.torrestama.com/ogdenbook and at amazon.com.
The Alexandria Museum of Art in Alexandria, Louisiana is currently hosting the full traveling exhibit called New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy through March 6, 2010. http://www.themuseum.org/
ABOUT THE ARTIST: José Torres-Tama is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and writer working in visual and performance art. For twenty years he has worked in the New Orleans arts community, and since 1995, he has toured nationally and internationally with his multimedia performances. He is the recent recipient of a 2010 Creation Fund Award by the National Performance Network in New Orleans for the commissioning of a new solo work called Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers, which chronicles the current rise in hate crimes against Latino immigrants in the United States.
A Louisiana Theater Fellow and NEA award recipient, his post-Katrina solo The Cone of Uncertainty has toured internationally to London, Liverpool, and Aberystwyth, Wales, his post-Katrina commentaries have aired on NPR’s Latino USA, and WWNO, the public radio station in New Orleans. www.torrestama.com
Torres-Tama is both a versatile writer who can be lyrically evocative as well as bitingly humorous, and an impressive performer.