“X” Marks The Diverging Tales of Post-Katrina New Orleans

After Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 28, 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) organized, albeit belatedly, search and rescue efforts. Responders spray painted each damaged building they searched with an X-code, a large “X” that within its four quadrants conveyed information about the findings of the search, from body counts to hazards present within the structure.

In the ten years that have passed since Katrina hit, the X-codes, known amongst New Orleanians as “Katrina Crosses,” have become a symbol, serving as a reminder of the destruction and death that befell the city. The X’s lie at the foundation of a movement made up of local artists who seek to document and reproduce the symbol in their work, evoking memories of the storm and its aftermath. In a post-Katrina New Orleans that boasts a booming economy, successful tourist industry, and growing entrepreneurial culture, the recurrence of the X challenges the unbridled rhetoric of triumph, progress, and revitalization that has been used by many in the telling of the New Orleans turn-around story.

When viewed as an artistic element, the X-codes are visually engaging—brash in in their spray painted color, yet simple in their symmetrical and streamlined shape. In an interview with art consultant Dorothy Moye, Richard Campanella, a professor at Tulane University’s School of Architecture, described the X-code as “[…]hectic yet methodical. It was so ugly it was beautiful.” The motif of the X has appeared in photography, jewelry pieces, sculptures, and murals.

In 2010, to mark the storm’s five-year anniversary, Moye curated “Katrina + 5: An X-Code Exhibition” for Southern Spaces, an online journal about Southern arts and culture. The exhibition featured the work of twenty-five photographers, all of whom documented X-codes that remained visible on the exterior of homes. In an essay accompanying the exhibition, Moye wrote, “the X-code photographs…constitute a documentary archive with tales to tell.” Beyond the striking graphic itself, the X-code, as Moye suggests, allows one to literally “read” the story of Katrina from such images. For example, an X with a bottom quadrant filled with something like “DOA” (Dead on Arrival) or “DB” (Dead Bodies Found) triggers a memory of the high levels of human suffering endured after the storm.

The photographs included in Moye’s exhibition were primarily taken of X-codes that remained on vacant homes. However, as residents returned to New Orleans, some decided to recreate semblances of the code on the exterior of their homes. For example, local artist Erika Larkin created a wrought-iron X-code replica for fellow artist Mitchell Gaudet to display outside his home in New Orleans’s Bywater neighborhood. Gaudet told The Times-Picayune that the sculpture was “Katrina Stigmata,” which perhaps provides an explanation as to why Gaudet’s neighbors complained after he put the piece on display.

In the ten years that have passed since Katrina, many have shied away from talking about the tragedy, failing to confront the issues of racism, poverty, and inept public policy that lay bare after the storm hit. Such concerns have been obscured by the efforts of city leaders and many residents to portray New Orleans as—in the words of Mayor Mitch Landrieu—“America’s best comeback story.” That the city has made any kind of recovery is remarkable given the great extent of damage and devastation. However, beneath this dominant narrative of rebirth, is the tale of those that have not benefited from the city’s progress.

The racial and economic inequalities made visible in the days following Katrina—news images of the city’s poor and African-American residents stranded on the roofs of their homes or festering away at the overcrowded Superdome—continue to divide today’s city. New Orleans ranks second in income inequality among major US cities, with the median income of black households 54 percent lower than that of white households—a 37 percent increase in the income gap since the storm. Although the city’s population has returned to 80 percent of what it was in 2005, 100,000 fewer blacks now live in New Orleans. The city’s public schools have been replaced by an all-charter school system, while traditional public housing has been replaced with voucher programs, leading some to call post-Katrina New Orleans a “neo-liberal playground” for young, white entrepreneurs.

Landrieu has often referred to his city as a “laboratory for social change,” but in the continued face of inequality it’s necessary to question who has benefited from such change. New Orleans was, and still is, a tale of two segregated cities. A recent survey conducted by LSU’s Public Policy Research Lab found that 78 percent of New Orleans’s white residents believed that the city was “mostly recovered,” while only 37 percent of blacks agreed with the same statement. It’s clear that amidst the celebration of recovery, certain voices have been silenced, which is why the representation of X-codes in art is so powerful. The X, with the haunting and stigmatic meaning it carries, forces people to confront the past and remember all that went wrong ten years ago, thus challenging the veneer of progress that has been erected in post-Katrina New Orleans.

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