Jarrett Key

Dancing Free I

Jarrett Key’s practice combines several modes of production into a single frame, incorporating sculpture, painting, and performance. Dancing Free I, painted in wet cement, like a fresco, is part of a current series of paintings titled Leaving the City, which depicts Black people they know in lush, pastoral landscapes.

Raised in rural Alabama, Key’s series grew out of a few experiments conducted with visitors to their studio. “I ask them to close their eyes and imagine a Black person in an environment. They—predominantly white artists, curators, and educators—imagine Black bodies in urban spaces, landscapes defined by cement,” Key explains. The resulting works, as in Dancing Free I, are a celebratory image of dance and movement made in defiance to the cement and the limited spaces where Black people appear in the imagination of others. 

With Dancing Free I, Key aims to challenge stereotypes of how Black leisure may appear. It depicts a figure in a blue gown in a magnificent field of wildflowers with overhanging pines. The Southern Longleaf Pine, Alabama’s state tree, is incorporated into the composition, inspired by the southern countryside. The faint blue color is reminiscent of the paint used to cover verandas in the south,  distinguished by its resemblance to a clear blue sky. If an unwelcome ghost attempts to enter your home and your ceiling is a dark blue color, the spirit is said to gaze up and believe they see the sky and cross over.