Na Chainkua Reindorf creates "empowering and inspiring" artwork for NYC basketball courts

Artist Na Chainkua Reindorf has refurbished two basketball courts in Downtown Manhattan together with cosmetics brand Glossier, creating large-scale artworks to celebrate women in sport.

Building on a four-year-long partnership with the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), Glossier teamed up with Reindorf, non-profit organisation Project Blackboard and the New York City Parks Department to redesign the basketball courts in Tompkins Square Park.

Reindorf, who has previously starred in a campaign for Glossier, reimagined her artworks on a larger and more accessible scale for the collaboration.

She aimed to "add colour and excitement" to the neighbourhood, Reindorf said. To do so, the artist chose standout primary and selected complementary colours that would "enhance vibrancy and energy".

The decision to incorporate orange was made early in the design process, as it is one of the official WNBA colours.

"I hope residents, visitors and basketball players alike can enjoy the refurbishment both as a functional court and as a piece of public artwork," Reindorf told Dezeen.

The basketball courts feature depictions of a stylised eye, a recurring symbol in Reindorf's work.

"The eye places emphasis on the act of looking back, reclaiming one's agency and expressing confidence," said Reindorf.

"I found it important to incorporate the same eye into the court design to reference these ideas of empowering and inspiring women both in sports and beyond."

Project Backboard cleaned the subsurface of the existing basketball courts to make way for Reindorf's public art.

Cracks in the courts were filled and any dips were levelled, followed by two applications of acrylic resurfacing.

After resurfacing, the artwork was drawn and two to three coats of Acrytech acrylic colour coating, the same materials used for outdoor tennis courts, was applied. The backboard and rims of the courts were also replaced.

In 2023, Glossier shot its Stretch Foundation campaign with the women of the WNBA on the same basketball courts, and the refurbishment is part of an initiative by the company to show support for women in sports.

"Project Backboard's mission is to renovate public basketball courts and install large-scale works of site-specific art on the surface in order to strengthen communities, improve park safety, encourage multi-generational play and inspire people to think more critically and creatively about their environment," Glossier director Dan Peterson told Dezeen.

"From our perspective, if you renovate a basketball court and it looks essentially the same as it did before but with new coatings, you end up essentially serving the same population of users that were in the space before the court renovation," he added.

"In this case, we hope Na's artwork will encourage more people, but especially families and young women, to feel invited to play basketball in Tompkins Square Park."

Other innovative basketball courts can be found in our roundup of ten colourful courts from around the world. In London, designer Yinka Ilori 3D-printed a basketball court in rainbow colours.

The photography is by Austin Bell, courtesy of Project Blackboard.

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