Visiting Kota Ezawa's
Taking a Knee, presented by
Deborah Ronnen Fine Art at R1 Studios (1328b University Avenue), is the perfect way to dip one's toe back into the act of visiting an art gallery. This tiny space, normally a photography studio, has been transformed for a limited time to display an extremely powerful and timely exhibit of a very important living artist, whom I had never heard of. The collection includes several watercolors, two light boxes, and an animated video, that stitches together these images and many more.
Each painting is based on a photograph from actual football games, and portrays the act of taking a knee during the national anthem. Colin Kaepernick's initial act of protest was so controversial that it cost him his job. Sadly, the racial injustices that sparked those protests have not abated. Thankfully, more people have come to understand and participate in the protests, and that might actually lead to long-needed structural change.
I've never been a fan of the national anthem. Not just because the range makes it difficult to sing, but because of the lyrics. Why does a national anthem need to reference war? And why are we singing about "the home of the free," when at the time this poem was written, only White men were free? Black people were slaves. White women were essentially the property of their husbands. Indigenous people were hunted like animals. The Star Spangled Banner only became our country's national anthem in 1931. I can only hope that by 2031 a new, more inclusive, more peace-loving (and more singable) national anthem will be created. Oh, and that we will have dispensed with this ridiculous show of patriotism before sports games and opening nights of the RPO, etc....
The video plays to an instrumental version of the national anthem - Ezawa chose to let the images speak for themselves, knowing that viewers would have the lyrics running in their subconscious. The video is only about 90 seconds long, and runs on a loop that gives you the perfect amount of time to digest and consider before it starts again, and you can look for subtleties you missed the first time through: the pulsing of colors, the shifting of eyes, the fact that the only people who seem to move through the film are the photographers.
There is a much more in-depth description of the exhibit on the Deborah Ronnen Fine Art website. This is the type of exhibit you would expect to see in a gallery in New York City, and we are lucky that Ronnen has shared this rare opportunity with us in Rochester. It only runs through November 7th, and I urge everyone to see it in person.
