A nine-foot-tall birdcage stood on the sidewalk near the Perdido Street entrance to City Hall on Wednesday morning. The cage, made of welded iron rods, was an artwork meant to provoke conversation about the immigration raids taking place in the region.
Visitors were invited to open the hinged door and enter the sculpture titled “Self-Imposed Exile,” in order to contemplate the concepts of capture and incarceration. Those willing to experience the interior of the cage were given a small glass bird sculpture as a memento.
The interactive sculpture was created by New Orleans-born artist Mitchell Gaudet, who may be best-known for a decade-long project that has artistically tallied the annual number of murders in New Orleans.
Each January, Gaudet creates a stout iron frame upon which he displays arrays of glinting cast-glass shapes, such as white flowers, hearts, fallen leaves and bullseyes. The number of glass ornaments indicates the number of deaths that year. The attractive display lures passersby into conversations about New Orleans’ perennial plague of violence…