THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 ST 3Arena
HIGHLIGHTS FROM TMAGAZINE.COM“If you’re silent about your pain, they’ll
kill you and say you enjoyed it,” Zora
Neale Hurston wrote in her 1937 novel
“Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
Throughout this country’s history, black
Americans have been reminded near
daily that this remains true — both
literally and more obliquely. In creative
fields, for instance, the white gaze has
long determined whose stories are told
— what gets to be seen, what’s given
value and what’s deemed worthy
enough to be recorded and remembered
— enforcing a seemingly immovable
standard by which black artists and
other artists of color are nearly always
cast in supporting roles to the mostly
white stars of the Western canon.
Today, though, many black artists are
actively resisting that idea, creating
work that speaks directly to a black
audience, a black gaze, in order to
reform the often whitewashed realms in
which they practice. We talked with
nine of them — each a voice of this
moment, as the nation reckons with the
deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor
and others, and beyond — about mak-
ing work that captures the richness and
variety of black life. Whether it’s the
artist Tschabalala Self discussing the
fraught experience of seeing her paint-
ings be sold, like her ancestors, at auc-
tion, or the Pulitzer Prize-winning
playwright Michael R. Jackson search-
ing for his characters’ interiority, their
perspectives distill what it means (and
what it has meant) to be black in Amer-
ica. Here are comments from two of the
artists we interviewed. The rest are at
tmagazine.com.NOOR BRARAAMY SHERALDI realized very quickly,
once I crossed into painting the black
figure, that we are a political statement,
in and of ourselves, especially when
we’re hanging on the walls of museums
and institutions. Because of that, I knew
I didn’t want the work to be margin-
alized any further, and I didn’t want the
conversation to be solely about identityor politics — our images deserve more
than that. And that accounts, I think, for
why I paint in grayscale.
For a long time, I felt the work wasn’t
good enough. But then I started asking
the right questions: If I hadn’t been
born in Columbus, Ga., where I had to
perform my identity based on how the
lines were drawn down in the South,
who would I be? If I wasn’t so aware of
my blackness because it had been
placed against the stark white back-
ground of my private school, how would
I see myself? I was excited by Ameri-
can realism in the early 2000s and
began thinking about how I hadn’t seen
any work about just black people being
black, captured in moments that were
nothing special.
I always want the work to be a rest-
ing place for black people, one where
you can let your guard down among
figures you understand.
CALIDA RAWLESI learned how to swim
much later in life — just seven yearsago — and through the quiet laps and
the breathing, it became very therapeu-
tic for me. Whatever I was dealing with
before I got into the pool, I didn’t feel
the weight of it after I got out. A few
years ago, I started to think about how I
could explore that in my art. I learned
about water-memory theory: this idea
that water retains the substance of
things that run through it. I thought
about that in regards to the Middle
Passage and how many memories must
be in that water.
My parents didn’t learn how to swim,
and neither did their parents. That’s a
direct result of segregation. We didn’t
have access to pools growing up in
Wilmington, Del., and my father would
tell us stories of his own childhood
spent on the Maryland Eastern Shore.
Though his family lived just 10 miles
away from the beach, they weren’t
allowed to go there except once a week.
I was thinking about the residual
effects of that, which manifest in thenumbers: We in the black community
have the highest rate of drowning. That
fear still lives with us. So, ever since I
was a little girl, I’ve said, “My kids are
going to learn to swim.” In my last
series, “A Dream for My Lilith” (2020), I
tried to work through this layered expe-
rience by putting black people and
black bodies in water — there’s a lot of
emotion in that. I photographed and
then painted girls swimming in and
around the rippling waves and liquid
blue, surrounded by flickering stars
that form when light hits the water in
the right way.
It’s funny, though, because I didn’t
think that making work would become
about teaching my culture as much as it
has. There’s a whole black swimmer
community that’s reached out to tell me
they’re so happy I’m depicting these
images. And there are people who can’t
swim who love them, too, and they like
to get lost in the beauty of just seeing us
in water.ARTS AND LETTERS
‘We Are a Political Statement, in and of Ourselves’
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
AMY SHERALD’S “THE GIRL NEXT
DOOR,” 2019 (VIA HAUSER &
WIRTH); SHERALD’S “WHEN I LET
GO OF WHAT I AM, I BECOME
WHAT I MIGHT BE
(SELF-IMAGINED ATLAS),” 2018
(VIA HAUSER & WIRTH); CALIDA
RAWLES’S “RADIATING MY
SOVEREIGNTY,” 2019 (VIA THE
ARTIST AND VARIOUS SMALL
FIRES, LOS ANGELES/SEOUL);
RAWLES’S “REFLECTING MY
GRACE,” 2019 (VIA THE ARTIST
AND VARIOUS SMALL FIRES, LOS
ANGELES/SEOUL); SHERALD’S
“PRECIOUS JEWELS BY THE SEA,”
2019 (VIA HAUSER & WIRTH)When social distancing mandates struck
Daytona Beach, Fla., in April, residents of
Latitude Margaritaville (one of several “55
and better” communities inspired by the
Jimmy Buffett song) quickly gathered the
essentials.
There were face masks and gloves and
cans of food, yes, but also paddles. And
balls. And chalk. Because while the coro-
navirus pandemic may have put normal life
on hold, nothing was going to stop these
people from playing pickleball.
Invented in 1965 by a Washington State
congressman and two friends, pickleball —
whose name comes from either the name of
a cocker spaniel owned by one of the
founders or the pickle boat used in crew, de-
pending on whom you ask — is a mash-up of
tennis, badminton and Ping-Pong.
To play, two teams (typically two people
each) send the ball back and forth on a small
court, separated by a low net. The first side
to score 11 points by a margin of at least two
wins. Serves must be diagonal and under-
hand, the ball needs to bounce on each side
before a volley and players can’t hit when
standing in a close-to-the-net area known as
“the Kitchen” — but that’s about all the per-
snickety detail. Thus it has long been a sta-
ple of community center rec rooms and mid-
dle school gym classes.
In recent years, the pastime’s popularity
has soared. According to the 2019 Pickleball
Participant Report by the Sports & Fitness
Industry Association, there are more than
3.3. million players in the United States,
making it one of the country’s fastest-grow-
ing sports.
And thanks to the pandemic, there may
soon be many new “picklers,” as obsessives
proudly call themselves. In driveways and
rooftops across the country, players are set-
ting up makeshift courts, using temporary
paint or chalk to draw lines and making nets
out of whatever items are available, and
getting everyone in their households to join
in on the fun.
The talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres re-
cently said she was having a hard time
walking because she was playing so much.
“As we’re going through this together and
you’re trying to find things to do as a family
or as a small group, it’s a perfect sport to
take up,” said Tamara Baldanza Dekker, the
chief marketing officer at Margaritaville,
which has pickleball courts in each of its lo-
cations. To parents desperate for new ways
to entertain children (or themselves), pick-
leball can be a godsend. “It’s a multigenera-tional game, so you can play with your kids,
and grandparents can play with their
grandkids,” Ms. Dekker said.
Annie Webb, 55, a transcript clerk in St.
Davids, Pa., began playing pickleball last
year and has been glad to have it as an op-
tion during isolation. “Finding another ac-
tivity besides long walks with the dog while
our tennis courts are closed has been really
fun,” she said. And while running around a
court for an hour can certainly be a good
workout, pickleball, with its lightweight
paddles and low net, requires little skill or
training (though pros compete in U.S. Open-
style tournaments each year).
“You really don’t have a great advantage
hitting the ball harder than someone else.
It’s much more of a game about placement
and pace,” said Michael McLean, 62, a Lati-
tude Margaritaville resident and self-de-scribed “pickleball aficionado.”
There are few rules about comportment,
too. “It’s not like stuffy tennis,” Ms. Dekker
said. “When you go to these tournaments,
people are having a party! They’re interact-
ing with not only each other, but the players.
It’s serious, but serious fun.”
Laura Gainor, 37, a marketing consultant
for the USA Pickleball Association who
lives in Park Ridge, Ill., took up the sport
only after she got her job, but found herself
“extremely addicted immediately,” she
said. She passed her skills along to her
friends, and “pretty soon, we had 40 people
that started playing every Friday night.”
Because of the shutdown, gathering at a
court for a few rounds of drinks and pickle-
ball among pals isn’t possible right now.
“We all just want to play so bad, but you just
got to be patient,” Ms. Gainor said.
Some players are finding workarounds in
order to keep their friendly competitions
alive, however. In Margaritaville, many res-
idents passionate about both pickleball and
social distancing are wearing gloves and
masks during each match and touching
paddles instead of shaking hands. “Every-
body is very sensitive to being smart, be-
cause we don’t want the courts to close
down,” said Stuart Schultz, the director of
residential community relations there (and
Mr. McLean’s frequent pickleball partner).
The association’s website offers safety
tips (and paddles and other official equip-
ment for purchase). “We want to make sure
that they’re staying safe, because it’s such a
passionate group, and it’s so hard to not
play pickleball,” Ms. Gainor said.
For most picklers, though, playing at
home with only their fellow quarantiners is
more than enough right now. “When I’m in
the backyard hitting with my husband or
kids, I can feel like things are somewhat
normal,” Ms. Webb said. “Or, at least, have
hope that they will get back there soon.”The Perfect Pandemic Pastime? Pickleball’s a Possibility
Ellen DeGeneres recently
declared herself among the
sport’s ardent enthusiasts.
By RACHEL SIMONStuart Schultz, left, and
Michael McLean playing
pickleball last month in
Daytona Beach, Fla.CHARLOTTE KESL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES