Tay Butler Contest

Images courtesy of Ronald L. Jones

“CONTEST is a site-specific collage mural that merges two distinct racial moments in the history of professional basketball. In 1995, Denver Nuggets point guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, formally Chris Jackson, protested the American flag by sitting for the duration of the national anthem. Within 2 seasons, he would be out of a job, never to return to the NBA. In 1999, during the NBA Finals, New York Knicks forward Larry Johnson referred to himself and his teammates as “rebellious slaves” for their habits of togetherness and non- compliance with the status quo. NBA personalities like Bill Walton called him “pathetic” and a “sad human being”. Within a year, he too would be out of the NBA.”

“These two incidents identify the conundrum of the Black NBA athlete; wealthy and famous enough to be watched, cheered and idolized by the mainstream, but still subject to the discriminatory practices of an anti-Black power structure. Rich enough to purchase the illusion of transcending race, but too Black to be allowed into the upper echelons of power and ownership. Influential and relevant enough to be considered royalty in the neighborhoods they come from, but too socially distant and often, too disinterested to speak up for or give back to those same communities.” — Tay Butler

Tay Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Houston, TX. He received his BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston and recently completed his MFA in the University of Arkansas’ Photography program. After retiring from the US Army and abandoning a middle-class engineering career to search for purpose, Tay reignited a rich appreciation for Black history and a deep obsession with the Black archive. Using past and present images to create a historically-layered body of work, Tay reorients cultural material from the ever-growing Black experience.

Tay works with photography, collage, video, and sound exhibitions and installations. His solo exhibitions and installations include RE.Migrant I & II at Project Row Houses, (Houston) and We Are Still Searching at the University of Houston’s Louise J. Moran Fine Arts Courtyard. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Artpace (San Antonio, TX); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; and the Texas Biennial at FotoFest (Houston). Performance exhibitions include Jefferson Pinder’s Fire and Movement for DiverseWorks (Houston) and Tay has collaborated with the Houston Rockets, among others. Awards include the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council and First Prize in the 2019 Citywide African-American Artists Exhibition at Texas Southern University. Tay currently teaches in the University of Houston’s photo department and has led private and community workshops for Crystal Bridges Museum (Bentonville, AR) and The Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO).