Alumna Lily Brooks (MFA in Studio Art, 2014) is one of 24 artists from New Orleans who were selected to participate in an augmented reality (AR) public art exhibition curated by Los Angeles artist Nancy Baker Cahill. Cahill, in collaboration with app developer Drive Studios, developed 4th Wall as a free AR public art platform to "explore resistance and inclusive creative expression."
Battlegrounds, launched on October 26, 2019, invited artists to choose contested locations that broadly interpret the word "battleground" to exhibit their work superimposed on the site via the 4th Wall app. From Cahill, "Battlegrounds offers a new type of subversive public art which asks no permission, but attempts to prompt thoughtful discourse around the most urgent issues the artwork and sites represent for the larger community they serve."
The exhibition was reviewed by Los Angeles Times writer Deborah Vankin, including work by Brooks more specifically. "Artist Lily Brooks paired a photograph of a tree on flooded ground with the Bonnet Carré Spillway for her “Tree and Kudzu Near Site of Kugler Cemetery,” writes Vankin. "The Spillway, built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1931, functions as a flood control structure. But the site formerly housed sugar plantations, and two unmarked graveyards lie underground, the Kenner and Kugler cemeteries, which house the remains of slaves and their descendants."
Battlegrounds is currently on view through proximity to sites and available via 4th Wall app download.