NEW ORLEANS, LA.- Newcomb Art Museum presents EMPIRE – an immersive art installation by Los Angeles-based artists Fallen Fruit, David Allen Burns and Austin Young, celebrating the New Orleans tricentennial – commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods, and Pelican Bomb.

EMPIRE uses the vast archives and special collections at Tulane University as the material to create a complex visual narrative of New Orleans and its history of transnational trade and cultural rituals with myriad artifacts. Instead of following a chronological timeline, the installation creates a more complex vision of our uniquely American city.

The installation explores the complex narratives of one of the country’s most important port cities and the dynamic culture that emerged from European, African, Caribbean, Latin American and indigenous influences. “We spent over a year researching the vast historic archives and interviewing each archivist - the process was rigorous, intuitive, and full of unexpected treasures,” says Young. In EMPIRE, Fallen Fruit intentionally includes historical records, ephemeral artifacts, artworks, and objects culled from various archives across Tulane’s campus including the Amistad Research Center, Hogan Jazz Archive, Latin American Library, Louisiana Research Collection, Middle American Research Institute, Newcomb Art Museum, Newcomb College Institute, Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection / Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute, and Southeastern Architectural Archive, among other campus collections and recontextualizes them in the museum. Burns explains, “We’re shifting the lexicon of historical meanings into one work of art.”

EMPIRE critically examines the principles of archives and anthropology to interrogate the ways histories are told, remembered, and revised. The immersive artwork considers the historical and contemporary effects that colonialism, slavery, trade, and tourism have had on the movement of culture across and beyond borders–to better understand the geographic and cultural position of New Orleans in relationship to Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. EMPIRE invites viewers to creatively interpret the displayed objects, their connections, and their juxtapositions to generate new meanings.

“This is not a survey show, but rather an installation about how archives perform on the campus; it is a generative space of active looking and listening - where all are invited to gather, and to enhance the various tapped bodies of cultural knowledge at Tulane,” says Burns. “Visitors may have repeat experiences, as with a prism or rainbow’s light spectrum, and see something different each time. The display is not intended to be encyclopedic, but instead communicates universal themes of the human condition.”