November 13 - December 5, 2021

Second Saturday Opening Reception, November 13, 6 - 10 pm.
Regular hours Saturday & Sunday, 12 - 5 pm.
we can manage by Shannon Stewart on view Saturdays & Sundays, 3:30 - 4:30 pm.

Nothing Toulouse

A Front Collective Group Show curated by Elliott Stokes, Featuring

Tilted House (Small Book Press & Collective), presented by Samantha Best
Lily Brooks
Nurhan Gokturk
Ann Haley
Augustus Hoffman
Jeremy Jones
Dani Leal
Sara Madandar
Ruth Owens
Cynthia Scott
Rosalie Smith
Shannon Stewart
Elliott Stokes
Tom Walton

“Humor works to reveal the limits of life through the limits of what is representable. And it is through the experience of limits in our encounter with others that we also encounter the trauma of our own finitude, which reminds us that we have not yet lost the possibility of forging a new ground of human solidarity.”

- Jean Fisher “A Distant Laughter: The Poetics of Dislocation.”

The past 18 months have greatly disrupted our practices, livelihoods and values. As artists, the pandemic has certainly reframed our studio practices and research. How do we represent the collective shock that has affected every part of our lives as artists and New Orleans community members? Jean Fisher writes how throughout history, humans have turned to humor as a method for representation, dealing with grief and coping with trauma. “For memory to be effective it must reach large numbers of people, it must therefore find accessible form. [...] The more desperate the problems. The more humor is directed to describe it…” This draws on the survivalist necessity of laughter.

Nothing Toulouse pokes fun at ourselves as makers and examines metanarratives of grief, coping, trauma, collective memory, and imagination.