Artwork
LAFAYETTE SQUARE
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Kaleidoscopes
Kaleidoscopes symbolize the ever-changing possibilities of human experience. Inspired by NOLA’s vibrant colors, we guide audiences from shadow to light, revealing New Orleans’ spirit one color at a time. Puppets are wonderful tools for connecting and opening doors to learning. Using a mix of puppet characters, shadow theatre styles, handmade illustration, and animation, we aim to create playful scenes where animated characters reflect the city’s resilience and unity. Through joyful storytelling, music, and style, we offer a welcoming moment for everyone to rediscover hope, pride, and a sense of community.
New Orleans: A Living Collection
Created by New Orleans-based artist and designer Brennan Steele, this architectural projection transforms Gallier Hall into an animated celebration of forty years of the City of New Orleans Percent for Art Collection, managed by Arts New Orleans. Selected artworks come to life through color, texture, figures, and geometry that move across the façade, connecting artists, eras, and neighborhoods.
10 Years of Young Artist Movement
Courtney Egan and Monica Kelly
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Heart Remains
by Giselle Studios / PXL Studios
Heart Remains is a monumental light sculpture exploring the delicate balance between strength, self-preservation, and vulnerability. Designed as a giant glowing ribcage housing a soft, radiant heart at its center, the installation plays with the idea that our ribs protect our hearts while creating the vital space needed for them to breathe. It stands as an invitation for audiences to step inside, get curious, and open up—a physical monument to the boundaries that allow true connection to exist.
THE PUPPETRY PARADE
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The Fantastical Gar
by Jaime Bird
The Fantastical Gar is a 12-foot illuminated creature inspired by Louisiana’s ecosystems, alligator gar, and giant lantern puppets. Its translucent, serpentine body glows from within, transforming the familiar fish into a fantastical, bioluminescent creature. As viewers move around the sculpture, they discover that its body is bifurcated to reveal a hidden wetland ecosystem inside, filled with roots, foliage, reflective pools, and tiny lights referencing plankton and fireflies. This glowing interior illuminates the creature’s exterior, creating a magical connection between the animal, its habitat, and the landscape of Louisiana.
The Lightpole Folk
by Basqo Bim
The Lightpole Person is a nine-foot puppet by New Orleans artist Basqo, adapted from his illustrated series The Lightpole Folk. Its head is a 30-inch illuminated mask mounted on a streetlight pole. Its body is overgrown with foliage, the way things tend to get here. Two puppeteers work the arms while the artist pulls the whole figure on a bike trailer. It is part streetlight, part swamp, part neighbor. After LUNA Fête, the Lightpole Person will be permanently installed at a New Orleans Public Library or NORD site.
Lumo
Lumo is a Swamp Guardian Creature: a fantastical character, dreamed up as an embodiment of the collective imagination of the creatures of the swamps. This large-scale illuminated creature puppet, along with their little glowing swamp creature friends, draws inspiration from the flora and fauna of Louisiana swamps, as well as from the creative and imaginative spirit of the city of New Orleans. Created with fabric and textiles to evoke the intricate textures of the swamps, and brought to life with a team of puppeteers, Lumo has secrets to share that will be revealed by the light within.
Mermaids of the Troubled Waters
This work explores the history of Divine Feminine of our local Water Goddess of the African diaspora, Pomba Gira, Mami Wata, La Sirene; the Mermaid of The Mississippi. Keeper of memories and a protector, we recognize her motherly sorrow, and warrior’s rage at the pollution that human practices have brought to the ancestral waters. This celebration takes the form of three mermaid lantern puppets. These mermaids, which will swim in the air, will be accompanied by suspended memorial portrait lanterns which display faces and quotations drawn from members of the Gulf Coast community who have been affected by environmental toxicity.
Enter the Blob: Kyle Blob 2
by MILAGROS
Kyle Blob is inspired by childhood forts and suitable for anyone with an inner child. Kyle blob is a large scale, intricately painted, black light reactive, inflated fabric environment that people can enter. Kyle Blob houses several hand made plushies that we call "cuddle buddies" as well as custom, interactive instruments and costume elements. Participants are encouraged to explore and intuitively interact within the installation.
OCHSNER CHILDREN’S LITTLE LUNA KIDS CORNER
Presented by Ochsner Children’s
Making his New Orleans public debut, this giant mechanical harlequin invites visitors to sit in his hand and peer into his microscope, becoming both the observer and the observed. Playful and curious, he asks us to consider what our creations learn from us and the responsibility we hold for what we bring into the world.
Just a Spoonful
by Wendo & Jolean Barkley
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Sacred Heart - Need more info
Kyle Blob is inspired by childhood forts and suitable for anyone with an inner child. Kyle blob is a large scale, intricately painted, black light reactive, inflated fabric environment that people can enter. Kyle Blob houses several hand made plushies that we call "cuddle buddies" as well as custom, interactive instruments and costume elements. Participants are encouraged to explore and intuitively interact within the installation.
THE WELLNESS VILLAGE
Presented by Bayou Bicycles
The Village presents Light Work
Rooted in New Orleans’ fitness and wellness community, this all-ages activation invites visitors to move, play, and connect through dance, strength, cardio, balance, and playful physical challenges. Jump in, try something new, and move at your own pace in a welcoming experience designed for every body and every generation.
Dancing Grounds
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Illumaphoniom
Created by UK-based artists, this towering interactive musical sculpture features more than 200 illuminated chime bars that respond to touch with ever-changing patterns of light and sound. Visitors can play together, sending waves across its surface and turning a shared moment of curiosity into spontaneous music-making.
YOUNG ARTIST MOVEMENT BLOCK
Presented by Arts New Orleans
The Noctarium
Glowing windows reveal dreamlike scenes of nighttime life through silhouettes, inviting visitors to discover hidden stories within familiar urban spaces. By dialing a number, viewers can hear the characters’ inner thoughts and conversations, adding sound and intimacy to this interactive projection.
Young Artist Movement Market
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LAZ PARKING BLOCK
Presented by LAZ Parking
Orphic Orgin
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PIAZZA PARK
Explore exclusive light art installations in Piazza Park with $15 admission. Tickets are available on-site at the Piazza d’Italia gate. Children ages 12 and under enter free, and admission is included with a VIP Suite ticket.
Mycelium Network
Inspired by the hidden networks beneath our feet, Mycelium Network by UK-based light artist Stevie Thompson, founder of Custom Fibre Optics, transforms the intricate connections of fungi into an immersive landscape of light. Hundreds of fibre-optic strands weave through the environment, forming glowing, organic structures that evoke the underground networks connecting trees, plants, and ecosystems. Blending natural forms with futuristic lighting, the installation invites visitors to pause, explore, and reconnect with the natural world.
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by David Sullivan
Spectrul Scarab
Dohm Collective
New Orleans-based Dohm Collective brings its sixth annual BLEND showcase to Piazza d’Italia with nightly main stage performances, a silent disco, and custom projection mapping, featuring Loyola University students, MarchFourth, PURO NOLA, and special guest David Starfire. Visitors can control visuals on the collective’s projection-mapped, 24-foot geodesic “Dohm” while choosing their soundtrack through silent disco headphones.
Geist
Inspired by elusive neutrino “ghost particles,” this immersive installation transforms real data from Japan’s T2K neutrino detector into shifting patterns of light and mirror illusions. Visitors encounter a glimmering orb within an apparent galaxy, seeing their reflections mingle with animated light as their presence reveals changing colors inspired by the particles’ three types, or “flavours.”