When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf coast, artist Takashi Horisaki had just moved to New York City. New Orleans was the first place he moved upon arriving in the United States, so he couldn't help but cry over the devastating effects of the flooding: cars still on top of houses, debris still strewn across streets, and almost no economic recovery outside of tourism. Horisaki felt that he had to comment, and the result was a full-scale replica of a house in New Orleans' primarily African American Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Originally debuting ten years ago, Horisaki's new exhibition of the installation at Spring Break Art Show's BKLYN IMMERSIVE, titled Social Dress New Orleans – 730 days after 10 years after, reminds people of the economic conditions in the Lower Ninth Ward pre- and post-Katrina, while also commenting on the current racial tensions and gentrification in Brooklyn and beyond."I wanted to use this latex casting method to copy a condemned but not-yet-demolished house because then I could roll it up like fabric and ship it to New York relatively easily," Horisaki tells Creators. "I wanted to show people outside the area hit by Katrina what the state of affairs was nearly two years after the hurricane."Horisaki began working with latex casting while in college, before eventually using it in his first large-scale piece, a replica of the entryway to an old school in St. Louis. It went on like paint and dried in the space of an hour or so, though the New Orleans' summer made this rather difficult in creating Social Dress.Continue reading on Creators.
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