Back in our Winter issue, Amanda Ba told us "I also sometimes have a hard time just coming up with images purely from imagination. I think I'm a pretty realistic person, so I like to attach it to things that are happening in the world. It’s also affirming and validating to read what other people are writing and just feel like my work is more connected in that way—something beyond my personal attitude towards something." When I saw that her work for Micki Meng would feature sports, literally titled For Sport, it felt like the perfect continuation of this sentiment. Sports are ubiquitous, a metaphor or actualization of so many layers of life and the challenges we face. Sports can be teamwork or individual, fandom personal. And in art, there is competition and teamwork, there is desire and there is the depiction and examination of bodies that we see in both sport and art. As the gallery notes, across seven works, "Through these bodies in action, Ba examines how competitive sport reflects and reinforces cultural ideologies, national mythologies, and global hierarchies."
That most of the sports depicted here are Olympic-esque, "where heroism, aggression, and eroticism converge, and national power is projected and contested," Ba is able to show universal themes that we see across the world. Both sports and art utilize the body as a conduit for political expression, allowing individuals to voice dissent, hope, and solidarity through either physical performance or artistic representation. This is Ba at both a playful and poignant peak. A battle of and for bodies, a battle for identity.—Evan Pricco
