Giant lantern mermaids, a 24-foot harlequin clown, and a parading gar fish are converging on downtown New Orleans this week as LUNA Fête returns for its 12th edition, running Nov. 13-15 from 5 to 10 p.m. nightly. The free light and art festival, themed The Puppetry Parade this year, brings projection mapping, puppeteer-driven sculptures, and a multichannel silent disco to a stretch of the Warehouse District.
The festival is presented by Arts New Orleans, the organization formerly known as the Arts Council of New Orleans, which describes LUNA Fête as the nation’s longest-running large-scale projection mapping festival since its 2014 launch. This marks the event’s return after Arts New Orleans postponed the planned 2025 edition, with the organization saying the move from November 2025 to November 2026 followed shifts in federal and local funding support. As Gambit reported, the festival features five artists or groups presenting puppets or large moving sculptures in Lafayette Square, with three mobile puppet or sculpture works parading each night.
Lantern Mermaids Honor Cancer Alley
Among the centerpiece installations is Troubled Waters, a collaboration between Samille Ganges, who creates work as PlantainFutures, and Pandora Gastelum, who founded Mudlark Public Theatre and the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival, per Gambit’s reporting. The piece features three giant mermaid lanterns built with lightweight plastic skin that responds to heat and reflects light, representing mythical guardians of Louisiana’s gulf, rivers and bayous.
The installation includes a grotto resembling whale bones hung with lanterns and was created to remember and honor people lost or affected by Cancer Alley and environmental degradation, according to Gambit. Gastelum said the mermaids are keepers of memories and that the work seeks to address a critical issue through beauty and light. Part of the installation will parade during the festival, and the artists plan to lead a workshop on making lantern puppets; afterward, the artwork will be installed at the Mid-City branch of the New Orleans Public Library.
A 24-Foot Clown and Other Creatures
Also making its New Orleans debut is Zozobot, a giant harlequin clown sculpture built by Walker Babington and his team at Sabatom Studios in 2024. The piece stands 24 feet tall while seated and, according to Babington’s estimate, would reach 50 feet tall standing upright; it has a steel frame covered in reclaimed wood and sheet metal with harlequin stencils, a fiberglass face illuminated from within, and shoe tips fashioned from large propane tanks, Gambit reported. Visitors can sit in its hand and look through a massive kaleidoscope powered by light and video, though the sculpture does not move while on display. It was displayed at Hermitage Museum & Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia, for much of the preceding year and may be surrounded by costumed members of the Sabatom team at LUNA Fête…