Home Artist Programs Supported Artists paris cian

paris cian

New Orleans, Louisiana

The bas du fleuve installation includes three vertically oriented metal frames hanging against a brick wall. Each frame is strung with fiber and ropes, nets, photographs, and oyster shells are suspended from the grids. Informational labels, illegible here, are between the panels, and the ground is piled with blue- and white-toned oyster shells.

bas du fleuve installation

2024 - 2025

We look slightly down onto a person crouching and covering their body with a net in this digital print titled net fold. A white net over the head, at the center of the composition, stands out against the wider net against dark-toned skin. The dark ground is scattered with scrubby growth, rocks, and pebbles.

net fold

2024

Eighteen posts are driven into a grassy incline in rows in this digital print titled We arrive at the port and we…. A person at the center of the photograph is backlit against the washed out sky. They bend or bow forward and hold a net up high with both hands.

We arrive at the port and we...

2024

This film still from theShorein_SIGHT shows three ghostly, indigo-purple human forms that might be reflected on or veiled by rippling water. Wing-like forms span the trio, who appear to stand and face each other draped with white and vivid purple robes. The central person might clutch an infant.

theShorein:SIGHT

2021

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About paris cian

Black and white photo of paris cian, who sits on the far side of a table strewn with images. paris looks steadily at us with a hint of a smile. She has short-cropped hair and wears a dyed wrap. A cloth hanging from above screens much of the studio space behind paris.

paris cian is a New Orleans Black girl playing and composing with devotion and impermanence. As a movement architect, scholar, and curator working with and through various interdisciplinary forms of performance art, cian's creative work mobilizes embodied memory and ecological play into a worldmaking practice. She is in conversation with Black girlhood, climate change, spatiality, hurricanes, and time. Currently, she is the Public Art Project Manager for Arts New Orleans. Her performance exhibitions/installations, practices, and organizing include: The Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Liberated Planet Studio, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Krannert Art Museum Illinois, and BlackGirlGeniusWeek/SOLHOT. paris cian received her BFA/BA in Dance with a concentration in social justice, gender women’s studies from Hollins University (2018) and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography at Roehampton University, London, UK (2021).

Program Participation

Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2026

Website / Social Links

“ The vulnerability of our bodies and the body of the land are interconnected. I work with oysters as guides and ancestors, to listen for ways of living with water.”