James Little USA, b. 1952
Democratic Experiment, Expanded, 2023
Basketball court in Tom Lee Park
Memphis, TN
Memphis, TN
9086
Basketball court in Tom Lee Park, located under the Tyre Nichols Canopy, designed by Studio Gang, is an expanded version of the Artist’s 2017 painting, “Democratic Experiment”. As Ross Gay...
Basketball court in Tom Lee Park, located under the Tyre Nichols Canopy, designed by Studio Gang, is an expanded version of the Artist’s 2017 painting, “Democratic Experiment”.
As Ross Gay writes in the essay “Insurgent Hoop,” on a pickup basketball court, “there is no fixed law. There is only us… assembling and disassembling and reassembling, in perpetual negotiation of the rules, in perpetual common wonder of how we’re going to be together today. What’s going to be a foul, what’s going to be a carry, what’s going to be a walk, what’s going to be our mode of protest, our mode of acquiescing, our mode of negotiation, changing with every game.”
In that context, the title “Democratic Experiment, Expanded” takes on meaning beyond the physical expansion of the artwork, and the installation can be viewed as perpetually asking the City of Memphis, and all of the visitors to Tom Lee Park, how are we going to be together today?
As Ross Gay writes in the essay “Insurgent Hoop,” on a pickup basketball court, “there is no fixed law. There is only us… assembling and disassembling and reassembling, in perpetual negotiation of the rules, in perpetual common wonder of how we’re going to be together today. What’s going to be a foul, what’s going to be a carry, what’s going to be a walk, what’s going to be our mode of protest, our mode of acquiescing, our mode of negotiation, changing with every game.”
In that context, the title “Democratic Experiment, Expanded” takes on meaning beyond the physical expansion of the artwork, and the installation can be viewed as perpetually asking the City of Memphis, and all of the visitors to Tom Lee Park, how are we going to be together today?
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