Swing

Nari Ward, Swing, 2010, shoe tips, car tire, shoe tongues, rope, 32.0 × 32.0 × 16.0 in. (81.3 × 81.3 × 40.6 cm); rope length variable, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Fund, 2018, 2018.14, © 2010, Nari Ward

Artwork Details

Title: Swing
Artist: Nari Ward
Date: 2010
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum
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3rd Floor
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North Wing
Dimensions: 32.0 × 32.0 × 16.0 in. (81.3 × 81.3 × 40.6 cm); rope length variable
Copyright: © 2010, Nari Ward
Credit Line: Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Fund, 2018
Mediums Description: shoe tips, car tire, shoe tongues, rope
Classifications: Sculpture
Highlights: African American Art
Object Number: 2018.14
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2018.14

Artwork Description

Jamaican-born artist Nari Ward has long salvaged materials from the streets near his studio in Harlem, New York, to create art that confronts political and societal issues. Ward notes that found materials "already have history...the discarded [holds] a sense of hopefulness as well as vulnerability." The materials in Swing, a car tire riveted with the tips and tongues of shoes, suggest motor and foot travel, as well as the lives and labors of common people. This artwork powerfully oscillates between extremes, bringing to mind a child's tire swing in a makeshift playground, as well as a fatal violence introduced by its hangman's noose and echoed in its title, which summons the melancholy spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."