Swing

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.”