NFL-Corner(Curved Piece)

This piece shows a man fresh off the Middle Passage, chained and standing on the auction block. The curved canvas does the rest: face him head-on and he looks strong, almost larger than life...the person he was before the ship. Walk to the left and he shrinks in front of you, his body collapsing into the shape of someone starved, beaten, and broken by the journey. That shift isn’t a trick. It’s the same transformation enslaved people were forced through for profit. I titled it NFL because the comparison isn’t subtle. Auctions became drafts, inspection blocks became combines, and the people with the power over the bodies never really changed, just the uniforms did. This piece is about the cost of being treated like property, then and now, whether the world wants to admit that connection or not.