Archive: Cortés and Turner
"Identity and Connection," New Orleans Art Review 2020-21 https://www.noareview.org/uploads/4/3/5/8/43585085/noar-2020-21-looking_back-zz.pdf “I am.” It’s an ancient, glorious, and difficult mantra. I was struck with it in mind as I walked from Jonathan Ferrara Gallery with two painting students after viewing works by Esperanza Cortés in her solo exhibition “Arrested Symphony,” and “Here and Now” by Meg Turner at the Contemporary Arts Center – a solo show reiterated in a new form in New Orleans from her Master of Fine Arts thesis at Columbia– about conceptions of identity. The students accompanying me engaged in a variety of friendly banter, getting to know each other in the first two weeks of class, as I drove them back to school. I thought of the awkwardness of learning about someone new (as the practice of being a carpooler always does for me). That process of creating familiarity and a recognition of another’s identity has a lot to do with establishing sense of