Turning addresses the challenge of living with water in the city through what artist Michel Varisco calls “an elegant blend of social and environmental activism with interactive sculpture, where the history of the land itself is an integral component of the piece.” The sculpture consists of three, 9-foot, stainless steel, interactive “prayer wheels” individually cut with iconography of the Mississippi River from three distinct periods of the riverʼs history - the wild era, colonial plantation era, and petrochemical era - based on the mapping in Kate Orffʼs seminal book, Petrochemical America.

Each cylinder is rooted in a hand-made mosaic base that depicts the patterns created from deposits of the riverʼs sediment over 7,000 years, informed by the Fisk maps of 1944. At night, the prayer wheels will emit pulses of dim blue light via solar power, and visitors may spin each wheel to intensify the emissions. The path that weaves through the installation echoes the riverʼs serpentine curvature, while the indigenous plants surrounding the site were planted by Varisco and a team of devoted community volunteers.

Turning, a featured work of Prospect.4 : The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp,” is one of two Living with Water-themed public art installations selected as part of the 2015 Water Challenge public art pitch. The pitch was sponsored by Propeller: A Force for Social Innovation, Idea Village, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. The work was commissioned by the Arts Council New Orleans as a City of New Orleans Percent for Art commission and premiered as a temporary installation at LUNA Fête 2016.