Prayers On Fire

Kelwin Coleman

A culmination of  2024 residencies:

Castle Hill at Edgewood Farms

Incahoots Residency

Kala Institute 

Prayers on Fire is a solo exhibition examining masculinity in contact sports through various lenses. In intaglio, cyanotype, relief and drawing based printed 2d works on paper, wrestlers are collaged; they are distorted into submissive poses that harken towards the spiritual and the sexual. The work is meant to create a direct connection between the aggressive nature of sports and solitude of masculinity by introducing queerness and religious contemplation. 

This is not a criticism or value system on the merits of sports but an investigation into how we view competition, reward, desire through masculine needs. Layered within my own experiences with adolescent athleticism, I create portraiture without identity markers. These figures are free to be projected onto by the viewer; lending themselves to the universal nature of the “sports- masculine”.

Violence through sports and competition is viewed as safe whereas violence outside the arena is a crime. What propagates our need to see and facilitate masculine aggression within these acceptable guidelines and what happens when they take on a revised context? The prayers that influence the titles of most of the work in the exhibition are prayers of a submissive nature. They explore the wrestlers' pose into acts of contrition and openness to and through vulnerability.

Prayers on Fire questions what underlying curiosities exist within masculine sports culture. How do we resolve the threat of this panic if not through opening the doors for discourse between these positions of affirmative and submission.