Sports/Race
2004- 2008 and 2021-2 The Court(ed) series (Sports and Race through schematic abstractions)
Compositions of sports floor plans form emblematic blueprints that resonate with underlying patterns of race at work locally in the commodification of sports. School gymnasiums are surrounded in a ‘squeeze’ by professional floor diagrams.2006-8 sports and race in figurative pattern paintings
In a group of canvases as ‘social fabrics’ I appropriate coverage from newspaper sports pages by tracing contours of athletes ‘in play’ and converting their forms into lush, paisley patterns. This abstraction resonates metaphorically with the peculiar reality of players- reduced to a number- yet simultaneously elevated by spectator fetishism. Problematic aspects of the commercialization of sports slip away in its overwhelming spectacle and coverage. The decorative camouflage in these paintings implicates our (speaking from my majority culture vantage) unconsciousness of the nuances of racial dynamics-one gained through intimacy or proximity- difficult to reach in our historical (and continued) degree of social and spatial separation.
