Prioritizing Black leisure in a metropolitan community, EJ Hill’s Prospect.5 contribution takes as its focal point Six Flags Jazzland, a major amusement park in New Orleans East that opened in 2000 and was shuttered five years later after Hurricane Katrina. Viewing the park’s closure as the loss of space for Black joy, Hill researched what happened to the now defunct theme park and what plans are in store for its future, as the city redevelops it. Particularly taken by the Big Easy Ferris Wheel, a massive and iconic structure, Hill used a gondola, or enclosed seat, from this ride as the centerpiece of his sculpture installed in New Orleans East, the community most impacted by the park’s closure.

In Ferris wheels, Hill finds a subtle but splendid thrill, elevating riders to rarely accessible heights and offering spectacular vistas in a cyclical up and down loop. Joe W. Brown Park is a space where Black residents continue to play, connect, and celebrate—it is a point of community pride. This sculpture, Rises in the East, is a monument to the recent history of New Orleans and to the existence, persistence, and necessity of everyday pleasures.

Presented by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.

—Prospect New Orleans (December 2021)