Sharon Hayes Turns the Camera on People Who Have Found Their People
Ricerche: two, a new film by Sharon Hayes (MFA, 2003), examines the intimacy of women’s American football teams, captured only a month before lockdown.
"American football is a ‘contact’ sport. Plays are intensely physical and strategic manoeuvres are often communicated non-verbally. In early 2020, the artist Sharon Hayes filmed herself interviewing the players of two Texas-based women’s tackle football teams: Arlington Impact and Dallas Elite Mustangs. In Ricerche: two (2020), the players are filmed at close range; some sling their arms around each other as they squeeze into the camera’s frame. When the video was presented last winter as part of the group show ‘Commonwealth’, at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond, it was projected onto an arched screen that stretched across the length of the gallery, mimicking a huddle formation. With social-distancing measures in effect at the museum, it was remarkable to watch such bodily intimacy in the knowledge that it was captured only a month before lockdown.
Sharon Hayes, Ricerche: two, 2020, video still. Photograph: Rolando Sepulveda II; courtesy: ICA and VCU, Philadelphia
‘Does football make you a better lover?’ Hayes asks the teammates. Some laugh, others duck their heads to avoid the camera’s gaze. ‘It makes for an attractive situation […] and the women come,’ says one, while another notes: ‘I’ve had guys not talk to me because they’re intimidated.’ Sexual difference is implicit in these responses, without the invocation of fixed labels. Hayes’s questions are direct, but feel leading in a way that’s meant to elicit laughter and a sense of familiarity with the players. Optically, Hayes does not film these athletes mid-play in the style of National Football League (NFL) games, using aerial cameras, but pulls in close to capture the helmets-off camaraderie of pre-play huddles, foregrounding the differences between teammates. Rather than conceal the individuals who make up the team, Hayes gives them the space to be themselves.
Ricerche: two is the third work in Hayes’s series ‘Ricerche’ (Italian for ‘research’), which she began in 2013. In Ricerche: three (2013), she interviews students at an all-women’s college in Massachusetts, while in Ricerche: one (2019) she speaks with a group of children of queer or gender non-conforming parents. Hayes attributes this style of interviewing people in groups to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 documentary Comizi d’amore (Love Meetings), in which the Italian director films himself informally interviewing subjects on the street about sex and sexuality. Like Pasolini, Hayes exclusively films outdoors: on the university quad, the beach and the playing field. These spacious open-air environments amplify the choice these individuals have made to convene in tight groups together."— Maddie Klett, May 19, 2021
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Frieze website.
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