About the Work
Nari Ward’s piece titled Gimme! is part of his Role Play Drawings series. In this series Ward uses cards he found on an elementary school playground in Harlem. These cards were published in the 1960s and used to perform psychological tests on school children at the time. Ward alters the images with shapes and figures in ink, reshaping the narrative and obscuring psychological interpretation. The series comments on the psychiatric practices of the time and questions our perception of childhood.
About the Artist
Born in Jamaica and working in New York, Nari Ward has mastered the use of the found objects in his work. For his large sculptural installations, Ward reclaims materials he finds in his neighborhood—everything from debris to precious treasure—to create abstract and figurative forms. His work focuses on political and social issues such as poverty, race, and consumer culture, examining the value, that which is inherent and that which we bestow, of the objects around us. Though he includes materials from neighborhoods with which he feels personally connected, the meaning behind the resulting works remain ambiguous.
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