What We Fund
"You Are What You Eat" by Jessica Strahan
Located at 730 Baronne St.
Jessica Strahan’s artwork depicts the people and colorful culture which make up the New Orleans community. Taking inspiration from the food we eat and the connection it has to our heritage, the portraits in You Are What You Eat combine people with the food and fabrics from their culture. This mural was created in partnership with students from the New Orleans area and depicts family life reflecting New Orleans community strength and resilience.
About the Artist
Jessica Strahan is a native New Orleanian who is inspired by the vibrancy of the Crescent City, as well as the African diaspora. Self-taught, she creates portraits that amplify the African influence on New Orleans culture, from the city’s neighborhood cultural practices to its shot-gun architecture and culinary traditions to the facial features and hair stylings of its residents. Her paintings play in the parallels and dissonance between the past and the present to create windows into imagined futures.
Strahan’s paintings have been exhibited, collected, and published nationally and her murals color neighborhoods throughout New Orleans. From 2014 through 2017, she co-produced the annual Art Madness exhibition, as a founding member of Axiom Art Collective and Gallery. In 2016, Strahan was named Regional Winner of the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series during Miami’s Art Basel. She is also the 2019 winner of The Helis Foundation Art Prize for Louisiana Contemporary at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, juried by David Breslin, the DiMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Strahan’s paintings have been exhibited at the Ashe Cultural Arts Center, the Joan Mitchell Center, Lemieux Gallery, the New Orleans African American Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Rush Corridor Gallery.
