How US artist Mark Bradford teamed up with Hong Kong students ahead of his new exhibition
Currently showing at Hauser & Wirth in Hong Kong, acclaimed artist Mark Bradford made a Los Angeles-style mural with Sham Shui Po students
The first thing you notice about the American artist Mark Bradford – especially in Hong Kong – is his height. He is a couple of centimetres over two metres (six foot seven) tall and as slender as a wand. He is now 62 and an acclaimed artist, but for at least half his life, people have assumed he is a basketball player.
That, and race, are identity issues that feed his art. In 2003, he made a video of himself called Practice in which he attempts to play basketball in a billowing Gone With The Wind, slavery-era Antebellum hooped skirt in purple and gold, the official colours of the Los Angeles Lakers.
You can watch clips of it on YouTube. It happened to be filmed on a breezy day so there he is, being repeatedly blown over, flailing as he tries to get up, looking both ridiculous and touching, tall yet somehow tiny.
Bradford, who is gay, says it is about struggle. Clearly, practice – a word relevant to both athletes and artists – makes perfect.
In 2017, Bradford represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. In 2021, Time magazine listed him as one of its 100 Most Influential People.
