Every piece in Fallen Fruit’s “EMPIRE” at the Newcomb Art Museum tells a story of New Orleans culture and folklore.

One is a picture-perfect print of oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, carnival beads and toilet paper (the duo visited New Orleans to collect source material after the Tucks parade). Another features exotic figures from vintage Carnival floats. And the largest room in the show is covered in a gorgeous print of some of the flowers that cover New Orleans in their scent and color. But Fallen Fruit asks you to consider those images more closely: Those flowers are all non-native and invasive species, and the oak print underscores the essential strangeness of man-made material like plastic beads and toilet paper as “natural” parts of the environment. And those Carnival scenes are based on outmoded stereotypes of Native Americans. Click here to read the full article.