The origins of these ‘Jump paintings’ stem from two full-size courts painted in 2020 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to honour Senator Flowers, whose impassioned 2019 speech against proposed ‘Stand Your Ground’ legislation went viral and inspired Lakwena in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement the following year. Entitled I’ll bring you flowers, the defiantly joyful paintings used the universality of the basketball court as a canvas to speak of hope in the face of oppression and blessing through adversity.
For these new paintings, Lakwena took physical and biographical references as a starting point. Each is titled with the first name of the player and is the same height as the individual. They are painted on bespoke slim wooden panels and given a seductive, almost mirror-like gloss. This idea of reflection adds a personal interactive element to the viewing experience.
Lakwena says “I like the notion of the basketball court as a platform or a stage where the players become almost like superheroes… The heights that they soar to… it’s like they are flying, somehow able to rise above the limitations of this world. This is especially poignant for me given that basketball is indisputably dominated by African Americans, and their style of play has shaped the game.
I’m interested in what brings us closer together, so for me these paintings are about being aspirational, dreaming, and the connection between people, but also about the link between heaven and earth and ourselves as individuals in relation to a higher power.
The politicisation of the game is something I’m interested in exploring. The ‘slam dunk’ for instance, one of Basketball’s great crowd pleasers, could be seen as a physical manifestation of black power. So much so that it was banned in 1967 for 10 years, coincidentally after a year of Lew Alcindor’s domination of the game. I see these paintings as an opportunity to celebrate black power, joy, and self-expression.”
These paintings were originally shown at Vigo Gallery and my review for Church Times can be found here. For more on Lakwena, see my Artlyst interview here, a visual meditation for ArtWay here, a Diary piece for Artlyst, and an article about emerging religious artists here.
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Sarah Brown - Didn't It Rain.
