Esmaa Mohamoud: To Play in the Face of Certain Defeat: Museum London, Ontario, Canada

To Play in the Face of Certain Defeat is a celebration of diversity and an urgent call to action around issues of racial marginalization. Taking inspiration from the African American writer Ralph Ellison, artist Esmaa Mohamoud explores the ways in which Black bodies at once appear―and yet are rendered metaphorically invisible―within the spaces they navigate. She aims to re-examine understandings of contemporary Blackness, questioning the definitions of Blackness as a colour and shade, and/or as a societal or cultural construction.

Mohamoud draws on the modern industry of professional sports, which she equates with a covert form of neo-slavery. The London, Ontario-born artist transforms athletic equipment and symbols to illustrate pervasive, discriminatory behaviours and attitudes based on race, class, gender, and sexuality. She examines collective and individual struggle, focussing on the homogenization of bodies within high-level athletics, and the enforced playout of competitive violence between Black subjects. Through sculpture, photography, video, and installation, she investigates how high-level athletics operate as sites of corporate profit and discrimination. 

The dozen artworks in this exhibition consider a variety of concerns. Mohamoud’s appropriation of basketball jerseys within Victorian-era ballgowns, for example, complicates the sport’s fraught relationship with queer, gender-fluid, and female identities. Hockey mesh becomes a physical barrier that articulates the economic privileges and barriers that define contemporary sport. Reconstructed football equipment, including branded black leather footballs and African wax-printed helmets, celebrate cultural plurality through their exuberant, diverse designs, while also protesting the staged enactment of Black violence for entertainment. 

Guest curated by Matthew Kyba, To Play in the Face of Certain Defeat is a plea to address the inherent inequities driving the contemporary sports entertainment systems, while envisioning agency, resilience, and collective strength.

To Play in the Face of Certain Defeat has since traveled to the Art Galleries of Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Hamilton (Ontario). It is currently on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta through April 30, 2023.