This was part one of a planned three-part series on Art, Race & Real Estate in New Orleans for a periodical called The Shotgun, which has since vanished from the web. You can read part two here.
Blackness has long been attractive to edgy white American artists, but New Orleans seems a magnet for a certain kind of shameless, tone-deaf racist art scammer. In 2014, one wealthy New Orleans white woman in her fifties gave herself the name "Ti-Rock Moore" and launched a successful art career founded on depicting Black suffering and racist imagery.
In an interview with nola.com arts writer Doug MacCash, Moore said her "privileged" white upbringing gives her an "acute" perspective on American racism. Moore made news in 2015 when some less acute viewers took issue with her life-size rendering of Ferguson police-violence victim Michael Brown's corpse, which she'd arranged face-down on an art gallery floor. Condemnation came from many quarters, including Brown's father, who called the artwork "disgusting."
Moore was unfazed. "I know how necessary this art installation is," she said. "I know it's important." Continue reading "The Curse of Kirsha: Ti-Rock and Muck Rock"