Exploring basketball, identity, and play through art | Marlon Forrester | TEDxBeaverCountryDaySchool
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3gK7l2jwww Video ID: j3gK7l2jwww ============================================================ [Music] hello how are you today excellent um my talk is based on the world is object and today I will take you on a journey um to kind of not only look at my artwork but also to talk about ideas around transformation through the lens of the blackmail body and sports we live in a world where sight is given more prominence than any of the senses what we eat what we see uh what we experience it's constantly fed to us through social media Tik Tok through all these different filters and today we're going to try to break that let's take a look world is object I'm from Guyana South America I came here at the age of three and my family always celebrated these amazing amazing carnivals these were opportunities for us to um think about our own cultural ancestry but also transform ourselves in these moments I remember my mom dad family members creating these beautiful costumes and these costumes were transformative this is a Queen mask that you see in front of you this is a jumie a jumie is an African spirit that that comes from the ancestral past that comes up to celebrate one's not only identity but one's space of transformation here's another example of a king mask where the male wears the mask and dance with it and there's actors in the back that help to move the hands and forms through space so seeing art for me was cultural right how do you how how do you understand and perceive um the world through something feel every day and you see but in the form I was able to listen to sound one of my icons and heroes was Martin Luther King but also Bob Marley and so obviously I have the locks as you can see right and not only just the experience of the music but the idea of peace and holistic transformation that he tried to bring with his music here I am um in 1995 I was a you know athlete playing basketball right uh at a private school in Maine I was on a full scholarship but while I was there I was still drawing writing poetry and painting to myself just quietly no one knew that the star athlete was an artist I'm working currently on a memoir with Seth rogo and I'm goingon to read a small excerpt from this uh Memoir uh he was actually wrote a book uh for uh Kendrick Perkins called uh Memoirs of his life so it's 1996 and I'm sitting there in the lecture hall at Brand University so this all started at Brand eyes and I'm looking at Renoir I'm looking at Monae paintings and I'm thinking about where am I in these paintings where am I what about my story my cultural history and so I continued on played for the dice for the judges and at that time once again still working still creating I decided that I wanted to become an artist So I entered into the the studio painting Studio classes and went deeper into painting and and print making I was lucky enough to have a guide along the way one of my guides was magdalina compos poemes who was one of the world's renowned Cuban artists phenomenal painter I also had another artist and educator and guide her name was Robin Dash she was a leftist Jew just really about resistance and activation and she supported my work too as well here's another guide along the way Peter Hy Peter hilly was the head of the painting department at Yale um and he actually introduce me to eyes of ideas of Russian constructivism um ideas of theoretical space you definitely check out this book it's called flash of the spirit all right it talks about um African dance and African-American ideas connect ed through philosophy and sports let's jump in my body the lens and gaze stripping down the symbol going deeper I started painting on glass I was very Traditional School of painting oil canvas but I wanted to splore other Medias coming out a year my mind was inundated with these new concepts of how to create and generate art collage digitally forming using my own body as a context or a a a space for narration in this work I also started thinking about physical forms sculptural forms that I could embed in I had a show at the national museum of African-American artist it was my first solo show and this is some of the work from that show this is called Rat Race and Below you can see these mechanical rats are running mice are running back and forth in an actual um geometric form that was taken from an actual basketball court so I use symbols from those courts and embedded in so I was asked to do um some public um projects where I engaged large communities and one of these projects was to use um objects that had either a religious or symbolic image connected to it so I found these pews and decided to place them in the middle of a basketball court and it was interesting on that day these guys who came to play they had their bags on them and they come in they're like what the hell is going they're like wait what is this and and they come up to me and I say to them this is actually an art experience and for a moment they grabbed one of the balls and they decided to play but they also decided to challenge me on two on two and three and three and I said huh are you ready I I still got a little juice left in me and as you can see in the far corner I'm holding up my hand that last bit a little follow through you know I still got that touch you know can put some points in from time to time excellent so here is the beginning this actually opened me up to this new series it's called the passing series and it's a performance piece where I memorialize or memorize or connect with my father who passed away while I was in grad school um he passed away when I was in U my second year and um one of the things he did for me was he always used to pass the ball to me as a young person and um in this series um I lay down prone and um same kind of similar way in which we think about the passage of slaves from you know Africa into the new world and I throw the ball up in the air hoping that he can still see me blow and receive it is a gift so I walked into public spaces here I am at Copley it's the sport it's it's our passion right how do you interact with someone who just loves the game and allows you to receive it some people would walk by and reach if you look in the far Corner she was like oh I'm about to take it away from you and she decided not to touch it but it was a very interesting conversation with people around the experience of activating public spaces and seeing my body in that space now I had a great opportunity to collaborate with Jerry Russo who's a phenomenal photographer he's a photographer for uh the Red Sox he's done the Patriots uh he's also done uh Revolution and he said marlein hey you know what you're a nice guy I like you let's collaborate together and so in this work we are looking at symbols that had Colonial or um had um Power um architecture uh and symbols of v in so we have it's called the passing this is um Grace now the ball becomes different watch it starts to float on its own right it starts to become metastized almost in a way into the own space the color changes the form the experience becomes a point of access a point of entry one says what is underneath the surface right we talk about what's underneath the surface but as you enter that doorway the work continues to take you there or at least hope as an artist we try do individual play versus team play well why do it on my own let's do it together right my game and your game so I started creating these drawings and these drawings were about thinking about um symbols and how these symbols could be manifested I use the number 23 for anyone know 23 who who that might represent anyone did I hear Jordan Jordan okay hey okay iconic figure everyone knows that name and so I started writing prepare for flight I almost thought I was going to be taking off right transmitting energy from this body into the new universe and I started looking at Byzantine painting and images too as well to use as uh a form of um introduction into that transformative space collage you know like I said I'm a painter but in this time all of my colors seem to be monochromatic Grays I don't know maybe the color that you saw that ecstasy the the vibrant calls from the past was somehow Stripped Away maybe it was about my journey and then once again I'm back another opportunity to engage public spaces uh I had a gallery store at the U medicine wheel and I used about 5,000 balloons and those balloons were represent representing for me bodies and people and forms I knew of some friends who uh that I played basketball with but they weren't able to you know they stopped playing and and life took over and the flight that dream we had of being great had dissipated and there be became pain and Trauma and lack being and voice and then I moved to utilitarian objects right objects that really there wasn't a hierarchy there was no need there's nothing above you above me above us right these forms we could work on collectively at the new art center I had an artist residency where I invited everyone in Newton in come on and so I also had some instructions there right how to activate these ideas of play and we used you had a timer you had a certain amount of time and move from one location to the other raise your your hand if you have heard of periscope anyone heard he Periscope Periscope Periscope was the first Tik Tok the very first check it out write it down and so Periscope um we utilized that and it was the first meta experience right where people in the actual um installation in the space could go online talk to friends and see themselves at the same time right it's the first Tik Tok and they it just was phenomenal and so people started working together right I didn't organize I didn't centralize I didn't tell people how to create Community they just did it on their own right abstracted forms representational forms but they all understood how to exist in space together on this blank empty wall canvas floor time meaning space they use charcoal redesigned engageing form my home World play and local play pause what do I do now what do I do now Tex Museum of Canada reached out to me and said Marlin the panm games are here we want you to represent your country with 39 other artists from around the world what we're going to do is we're going to take your image and we're going to embed that on a sale and we're going to seal it in the opening day so over 10 to 20 million people can watch it from from around the world it was a true honor I felt as an artist and also as a gye that I was representing not only myself but my country so our city of Boston once again someone called and said hey Marlin it's a great opportunity for you so I received a large public um a public Arts commission uh with 1% from the city of Boston's art and color department and um I also was able to collaborate with Studio L which is a local architect company and so they allowed us to now not only take the early imagined figures and symbols of geometric form but to make those into actual structures large scale public art pieces um so now I'm working on this place between Northeastern Madison Park it's called the thewit playground and that hold space will be uh you know earlier they gave us I think 250,000 but now we're over half a million which is amazing right the idea that the sport itself right this activation this sense of play right that you could take a simple idea and go underneath the surface go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and that's the I think that's the message right is that creativity itself if you're disciplined you practice it every day that you can become and change the world through those ideas and so after that they said hey Marlin the I they reached out and they said you know would you like to have a foster prize and I was lucky enough to receive the 2021 James and Audrey Foster prize and I made a switch right I you know I love painting and this was an opportunity for me to get back to color something I loved I grew up with was incorporated in the back Rees of my brain recesses of my brain and so these pieces were um of Saints and the series were called if black Saints could fly and each of these Saints represented a form a person a doorway a path so in closing art is important it's essential to our growth in our communities um young people need to have it I'm a a teacher I teach every day and at its core is how do we identify difference how do we identify what we believe can change the world no one will know until you give that young person the tools until you allow them the opportunity to go deeper underneath the surface and express what you have thank you so much let's sing [Music]