Katrina

Copied Viola Burley Leak, Katrina, 2012, cotton fabric and batt, lame, metallic threads, and acrylic paint, 76 3⁄4 × 72 in. (194.9 × 182.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.25

Artwork Details

Title
Katrina
Artist
Date
2012
Location
Dimensions
76 3⁄4 × 72 in. (194.9 × 182.9 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Fleur S. Bresler
Mediums
Mediums Description
cotton fabric and batt, lame, metallic threads, and acrylic paint
Classifications
Subjects
  • Figure group
  • Disaster — flood
  • Architecture Exterior — domestic — house
  • Disaster — storm — hurricane
Object Number
2023.40.25
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2023.40.25

Artwork Description

Viola Burley Leak 
born 1944, Nashville, TN; resides Washington, DC

???Katrina Wreckage and Tears . . . And Still We Rise
2012
cotton fabric and batting, lamé, metallic threads, and acrylic paint

Viola Burley Leak conjures the physical and emotional intensity of Hurricane Katrina, the deadliest storm to strike the Gulf Coast of the United States since 1928. After making landfall, the storm quickly overwhelmed the levees in New Orleans and claimed more than one thousand lives. 

Leak taps into the upheaval and dispossession that primarily Black and working-class communities in New Orleans experienced during and after Katrina, with silhouetted figures and hand-painted faces expressing despair. She placed an American flag “amidst the chaos,” she says, “to indicate the neglect by the federal government to act quickly to the plight of the citizens of New Orleans.” The event laid bare what some have termed environmental racism and the precarity of life at the edge of climate catastrophe.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.25


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