jam nola - Pearls of desire

Installation Room located at Jam Nola, 940 Frenchmen St, New Orleans, LA 70116. Cambria Bartlett worked as artist’s assistant on project.

Pearls of Desire is an immersive installation that explores climate resiliency as a deeply personal, communal act. At its center, an opulent freshwater pearl chandelier—sculpted entirely from recycled cardboard—hangs over a glittering floor of crushed recycled glass.

The space is anchored by memory: empty picture frames salvaged from the artist’s grandparents' flooded home hang decorated by painted poetic ribbons. These ribbons carry fragments of desires gathered from a public poll of New Orleanians—voices of a city shaped by water and survival. By reimagining discarded materials into grandeur and framing absence as possibility, the installation invites viewers to step inside, reflect on their own irreplaceable memories, and consider their place within the cycles of loss and renewal.