WHERE WE PLAY
This project explores access to space by empowering youth to share their relationship to gyms, basketball, identity and photography through workshops and a mural installation.
For a major percentage of the life of a gym, it is dormant.
When activated, these spaces foster relationships and wellbeing in ways that can have lifelong benefits.
In a city where there are increasing demands on these spaces - both for sport and uses outside of sport - access to gyms is becoming more precious.
Where We Play began as a conversation we had with photographer Ebti Nabag about how to create images that could spark bigger conversations about gym space in the basketball and sport for development landscape. We wanted to place the potential of an empty gym beside the raw inspiration of a gym full of life, activity, belonging and energy.
The great majority of basketball courts in Toronto are in schools, so we started this project at Dixon Grove Junior Middle School with a group of grade 6 and grade 7 students.
Over the course of three-weeks, Ebti led a series of six hands-on photography workshops to explore the idea of Where We Play.
The centrepiece of this project is a mural that animates an empty gym with the presence and personality of the students to represent the fulfilled potential of this space.
The contrast of the empty gym is both beautiful as an image of possibility and a prompt to think creatively about how we work towards the future of access to basketball.
We also see how the idea of Where We Play ripples into other connected environments through the series of photo essays created by students participating in the project, just as the positive impact of basketball in a gym space reverberates throughout other areas of our lives.
The portraits were an important component of the mural creation, but they also are a stand-alone component of Where We Play, offering a window into the process behind this project and the community built through a shared love for basketball and the creative elements that are organically connected to the game.
WHERE WE PLAY
Participant Photography
Through Ebti’s guided workshops, these photo essays were created by pairs of students who used the photography skills they were learning and applying to create images about how they see the idea of Where We Play in their school environment.
Being a part of this work on both sides of the camera added an important layer to the narrative of gyms and space to play being essential in changing the future of access to basketball and more.
by Abdirizaq & Ishmail
by Khaled & Shuaib
by Dhulqarayn & Khalid
by Abdelraheem & Bazil
by Asrar & Abbas
by Brianna & Vishal
by Esa & Maxwell
by Gabriel
by Kasey & Sanskar
by Nasri
by Olivia & Valentasia
by Veronica & Jaskaran
Participant Portraits
by Ebti Nabag
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ebti Nabag
A graduate of X University’s MFA program Documentary Media in Film and Photography, Ebti is a visual artist who works with photography, video, and installation. She is a digital and analogue photography instructor. She teams up with galleries and community art organizations to develop art programs that provide opportunities for creative self-expression and aid in the development of identity. Her personal work focuses on telling stories of the everyday person, often from underrepresented communities. She also uses her work to connect with her home country, Sudan, the people and culture of Sudan. She hopes her documentations serve as bridges between people and communities.
Her exhibits include Three-Thirty, The Bubble of Youth (2020), a part of Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, exhibited at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, and as an outdoor installation in Malvern. The Bubble of Youth pictures youth and after school cultures as a time of possibility and meaning making in which young people assert how they mark, claim and inhabit their community.
Safety in Public Space (2020) where she traveled city wide within Toronto to public spaces capturing communities’ changing interactions within their local parks, squares and centers of communal gathering. The work examined how ideas of safety manifest and are communicated in public spaces through borders, boundaries, signs, symbols, and public space architecture.
Tea Ladies of Sudan (2019) is a photo and video project funded by Canada Council. This work highlights the lives of Sudanese women who sell tea for living. The Tea Ladies are often the breadwinner of the homes. With the rise of the inflation rate in Sudan, and political unrest the women find themselves navigating challenges on a daily basis to provide for their families
In 2022, her work will be included in the 2022 African Biennial of Photography held in Mali.
PROJECT CREDITS
Portraits and Mural Design by Ebti Nabag
Workshop Design and Facilitation by Ebti Nabag
Virtual Gallery Design by Trung Hoang
Photo Essays by: Abdelraheem & Bazil, Abdirizaq & Ishmail, Asrar & Abbas, Brianna & Vishal, Dhulqarayn & Khalid, Esa & Maxwell, Gabriel, Kasey & Sanskar, Khaled & Shuaib, Nasri, Olivia & Valentasia, and Veronica & Jaskaran
Photo Essay Sequencing by Antonio Keleta
Production and Curation by Chris Penrose
Production Assistance by Hanna Hall
