Congo Square

sketchfab

Congo Square is the foundation of my creative venture, rooted in the culturally revered cradle of jazz in New Orleans, Louisiana. While pinpointing the exact birthplace of jazz remains a challenging task, historians generally agree that this vicinity near the French Quarter, now rechristened Armstrong Park, was where enslaved Africans could gather, play music, and barter goods under the French occupation of Louisiana. What draws me to appropriating the Congo Square title has little to do with pinpointing the origins of jazz or the specific historical context of black cultural expression; instead, I'm fascinated by what Congo Square embodies metaphorically and mythologically in the collective imagination of black communities, as well as how the colonized subject (manifested through the black other) utilized this physical and psychological space.