2026 Creative Capital Seminar — February 2026.
Registration now open
Looking at event itself text: IN UNDERTOW is an exhibition shaped by what already surrounds us. Rather than presenting a fixed interpretation of water, IN UNDERTOW invites artists to work from their own disciplines, experiences, and sensibilities, allowing water to surface gradually and deliberately across the works. What emerges is not a singular definition, but a shared attentiveness to water as a condition that informs how we see, remember, labor, and exist.
Water functions here as both subject and organizing principle. It is mutable and omnipresent, capable of holding contradiction: nourishment and destruction, stillness and force, memory and erasure. Across IN UNDERTOW, water becomes a lens through which artists examine place, identity, spirituality, and time. Water appears materially, metaphorically, and structurally, shaping rhythm, sound, movement, or process. Like water itself, its presence shifts from work to work, binding difference through continuity rather than uniformity.
Majority of the participating artists are based in Louisiana, a region inseparable from water’s influence. In New Orleans, water is not a distant concept but a daily negotiation. Rivers, canals, levees, ports, and coastlines shape the city’s physical form and its cultural imagination. The language of the city itself is organized around water, from Eastbank and Westbank to boundaries defined by flow and containment. Here, water is lived rather than symbolized, experienced as both sustenance and threat.
By tracing water as a connective force, IN UNDERTOW reveals how a single element can move through geography, practice, and lived experience. IN UNDERTOW positions water not only as material or metaphor, but as a shared condition that quietly shapes the artists, the region, and the works brought together in this space.
Artists included:
Eli Anderson (Hreoaks), Denise Augustine, Loren Brown Lacarbiere, Joshua Casimier, Mel Chin, Paris Cian, Rodrigo Delgado Jr., DiQuan Forcell, Trenton Franklin, Kyle Fulton, Jan Gilbert, Mattie Hanson, Malcolm Johnson, Kristina Kay Robinson, Vashni Korin, Laurita Marie, Lionel Milton, Philjack, Susan Openshaw LaRocca, Kathy Randels, Jessika Thibodeaux, Jade Thiraswas, Trenity Thomas, Gabrielle Tolliver, Denisio Truitt, Victoria Vasilevskaya, VntheV, Bianca Walker, Irvin Washington Jr., and Brikarri Williams.
Looking at event itself text: IN UNDERTOW is an exhibition shaped by what already surrounds us. Rather than presenting a fixed interpretation of water, IN UNDERTOW invites artists to work from their own disciplines, experiences, and sensibilities, allowing water to surface gradually and deliberately across the works. What emerges is not a singular definition, but a shared attentiveness to water as a condition that informs how we see, remember, labor, and exist.
Water functions here as both subject and organizing principle. It is mutable and omnipresent, capable of holding contradiction: nourishment and destruction, stillness and force, memory and erasure. Across IN UNDERTOW, water becomes a lens through which artists examine place, identity, spirituality, and time. Water appears materially, metaphorically, and structurally, shaping rhythm, sound, movement, or process. Like water itself, its presence shifts from work to work, binding difference through continuity rather than uniformity.
Majority of the participating artists are based in Louisiana, a region inseparable from water’s influence. In New Orleans, water is not a distant concept but a daily negotiation. Rivers, canals, levees, ports, and coastlines shape the city’s physical form and its cultural imagination. The language of the city itself is organized around water, from Eastbank and Westbank to boundaries defined by flow and containment. Here, water is lived rather than symbolized, experienced as both sustenance and threat.
By tracing water as a connective force, IN UNDERTOW reveals how a single element can move through geography, practice, and lived experience. IN UNDERTOW positions water not only as material or metaphor, but as a shared condition that quietly shapes the artists, the region, and the works brought together in this space.
Artists included:
Eli Anderson (Hreoaks), Denise Augustine, Loren Brown Lacarbiere, Joshua Casimier, Mel Chin, Paris Cian, Rodrigo Delgado Jr., DiQuan Forcell, Trenton Franklin, Kyle Fulton, Jan Gilbert, Mattie Hanson, Malcolm Johnson, Kristina Kay Robinson, Vashni Korin, Laurita Marie, Lionel Milton, Philjack, Susan Openshaw LaRocca, Kathy Randels, Jessika Thibodeaux, Jade Thiraswas, Trenity Thomas, Gabrielle Tolliver, Denisio Truitt, Victoria Vasilevskaya, VntheV, Bianca Walker, Irvin Washington Jr., and Brikarri Williams.
