November 8-December 7, 2025

Opening reception on Second Saturday, November 8th 6-10pm
Gallery open hours are Saturdays and Sundays, 12-5pm. & by appointment (reach out to a member-artist)

Programming This Month

Saturday November 8th, 6-10pm
Opening Reception, Second Saturdays

Saturday December 6th, 6 pm - 10 pm
dehumiliation short film screening at 6:30 + shakedown kickback

Room 1 + 2

Monday Shakedown

Jay Evans curated by Déja Jones

Growing up Black, Queer, and Christian in the South, exhibiting artist Jay Evans learned what it meant to be a walking contradiction. Being, both too much and never enough, always shrinking into spaces that could only hold fragments of themself. This exhibition maps a decade of that negotiation highlighting places that held and shaped Jay in their journey toward self-acceptance and wholeness. 

Monday Shakedown resurrects CLUB FUSIONS, a sanctuary where New Orleans' Black queer community didn't just exist, they birthed new ways of expressing. From the late 90s through 2015, shakers, queens, and emcees created entire vocabularies of music, fashion, and movement within those walls. The archival projections are acts of remembrance and refusal to let Fusions be erased from the city's memory. 

Monday Shakedown features video projections, a photo series titled Dyke Dysmorphia, and a collaborative collage titled Freedom Dreams (In Progress), where visitors are invited to add to the collage following the prompt, "What does Black queer safety actually look like? What would true belonging feel like in the body?" This exhibition is an exploration of Black Queer time in the South, and is also a ceremony. You are invited to witness, to grieve, to dream, and to contribute. The work is not complete without you.

Monday Shakedown is the final exhibition of the WE SEE YOU Residency + Program series at The Front Gallery, curated by Déja M Jones. It honors BIPOC individuals and groups contributing to community well-being, focusing on Louisiana BIPOC artists, collectives, and organizations advancing New Orleans through mutual aid, advocacy, and organizing.

Supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division Of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council, as administered by Arts New Orleans. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jay Evans is a multidisciplinary visual documentarian, percussionist, and storyteller from New Orleans, LA. Their commitment to preserving and sharing narratives through digital mediums seeks to bridge the past and present, filling in the gaps of lost perspectives with hope. This approach allows them to weave photography, collage, film, and works of historical fiction into an ever-evolving discussion about what is, once was, and could be.
@evnevns

Déja Jones’s practice is rooted in connecting communities, objects, cultures, and governance. Their installations and archival spaces consist of sculptures, paintings, and archival media from their studio practice and are grounded in their advocacy and community organizing. Jones pulls from their lived experiences growing up in New Orleans communities of spiritual healers, Black educators, and Black Indigenous legacy builders. Their community role is to organize movements and build objects and spaces that are sites of celebration, honor, healing, and revolution. As Jones unveils their story, they begin to connect similar struggles, enemies, strengths, desires, and goals of marginalized communities worldwide. “We are a diverse, one people and that is where our power lies.” @creating.dejamojo dejamjones.com

Room 2

Rachel Gorman, Dog Day, pigment print on paper, 18 x 24 inches, 2020
Rachel Gorman, Meat, pigment print on paper, 24 x 18 inches, 2023
Rachel Gorman, Beachgoers, pigment print on paper, 18 x 24 inches, 2021
Rachel Gorman, Pretending, pigment print on paper, 24 x 18 inches, 2022

People, Places, Things

Rachel Gorman

People, Places, Things is a selection of works that explore the uneasy entanglements between humans, nonhumans, and the ecosystems that bind them in an age of environmental crisis. Dwelling in the tension between the ordinary and the uncanny, each photograph captures scenes that seem familiar but, once fixed, reveal the quiet and disquieting strangeness embedded in the everyday. Presented alongside an original new media sculpture, the exhibition forms a meditation and a record of how we live, consume, and coexist amid deepening loss and ecological precarity.

Rachel Gorman is an award-winning designer and artist whose practice spans speculative objects, interactive experiences, and traditional artworks. Her work explores how humans relate to their environment, and to themselves, amid rapid technological change, climate instability, and biodiversity loss.

In recent years, she has exhibited her works in galleries and festivals across the United States and Europe, including NYCxDESIGN 2025 and the national BioDesign Challenge, where she received a special award for public engagement in science and design. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, and joined The Front artist collective in 2025. www.RachelGorman.Online @rachelgmakes

Room 4

777

Taylor Balkissoon

In my previous show at the Front, 444, I recreated a church with 4 church pews, 4 TVs broadcasting cosmic radiation, and 4 video pieces associated with air, earth, fire, and water, and sought to create a space where grief and power could coexist, much like in a church. 

777 is the next iteration in an ongoing series, and is inspired by two other spaces of congregation and conditioning – a school and a circus. 777 consists of 7 sound mixes, 7 sculptures, and 7 zines, all in association with the chakra system. It is a love letter to my inner child and to all the music that has shaped me as a person. Also to my ancestors, my family, my friends, my exes, my ops, my teachers, my mentors, and my own living breathing body, and to all that has been and will be <3

Taylor Balkissoon is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, organizer and spiritualist of Jamaican and French Canadian descent. They earned their BFA in Photography from University of Colorado Denver in 2014, and have lived in New Orleans since 2018. For the last four years they have been writing the horoscopes for Antigravity Magazine, and providing tarot and astrology readings across the city and the country. They are the founder of the grassroots arts organization Uptown Laundry, a collective that platforms anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist artists, and provides logistical and material support for local and global causes as well as individuals. 
www.taylorbalkissoon.com