Light Bearers Augmented Reality Installation
Gallier Hall, Mardi Gras | Young Artist Movement, Arts New Orleans
2024
Created during the Summer 2023 youth arts residency through Young Artist Movement, Light Bearers is a large-scale mural honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ Flambeaux Carriers, reimagined through the lens of young artists. Featuring a procession of student-painted self-portraits, the piece celebrates African American contributions to Mardi Gras and explores personal connections to Carnival traditions. Displayed prominently at Gallier Hall alongside the Mayor’s Grandstands, this work fuses historical storytelling with contemporary art practice.
Expanding on the mural, students developed an Augmented Reality (AR) experience led by Gabrielle Tolliver, activated via Apple devices, to immerse viewers in the mural’s creation process and cultural research. Audiences engaged with audio, video, and digital sketches documenting the project’s evolution and significance. This installation showcased the intersection of youth creativity, heritage, and technology during one of New Orleans’ most visible public celebrations.
Mural Description
Led by local artist, Journey Allen, in collaboration with the Young Artist Movement, the "Light Bearers" mural instillation pays homage to the Flambeaux Carriers who were the first African Americans to participate in the mainstream New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration. Flambeaux participants consisted of both enslaved Africans and freed men of color who would earn tips tossed from the crowd as wages for their service of luminating the path for nighttime parades by way of hand-held torches during the once segregated celebration. Although this practice was a reflection of discriminatory practices of the time, the act of serving as a flambeaux carrier became one that participants took pride in.
In honor of the contributions of the Flambeaux Carriers, the “Light Bearers" mural project took shape. This project features self-portraits of Young Artist Movement students adorned in the traditional attire associated with a variety of reflections of African American Mardi Gras celebratory practices. In addition to sharing the significant ways in which they personally celebrate Mardi Gras, students were given a small research project where they were to explore various Mardi Gras practices that were birthed in New Orleans' local African American communities. As a culmination to their learning experience, the lesson was brought full circle as students visited Gallier Hall where the only image reflecting African American participation in Mardi Gras held an image of men who appeared to be flambeaux characters or even tasked with pulling the float along the parade route.
The placement of this project at Gallier Hall is essential because not only is it a central location for parade goers to view the city's most prominent parades, but it is also a location that was once inaccessible to African Americans. This mural project is a reflection of the evolution of Mardi Gras practices overtime, and also speaks to the resilience of a people who literally lit the way for Mardi Gras to become the world renown celebration that millions have grown to love and who also evolved into culture bearers who continue to pass down the teachings of their practices to generations to this day.
