What must die and what should be reborn, reimagined, or resolved to go on living?

Morir es Vivir (To Die is to Live) is a sound and light installation that weaves together voices from across the New Orleans community.

The audio collage, presented in NOMA’s Great Hall, is the result of a series of conversations in which New Orleans-based artist Marta Rodriguez Maleck held space for people who wanted to express their grief and loss, contemplate mortality and rebirth, and explore the potential for healing and hope.

These conversations took place in the museum’s galleries and at several sites across New Orleans, in partnership with Jane’s Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, a housing rights organization committed to creating sustainable, democratic, and economically just neighborhoods, and L.U.N.A. (Latinos Unidos de Nueva Orleans en Acción), a grassroots multi-racial youth coalition that builds the power and participation of young people between the ages of 16 and 24.

Seeking to offer a space for shared reflection, Morir es Vivir explores cycles of living and dying as they relate to systems, beliefs, institutions, and relationships, encouraging us all to contemplate how we want to move into the future.

Morir es Vivir is collaboratively curated by NOMA’s Curatorial and Learning & Engagement Departments, through a Connector Residency Project as part of NOMA’s Creative Assembly Program.

NOMA’s Creative Assembly Community Engagement Initiative is supported by the Wagner Foundation. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.