Kota Ezawa

Narrator: Kota Ezawa based this two-minute watercolor animation on television footage of football players taking a knee during the national anthem.

Kota Ezawa: I grew up watching football more like in Europe and I heard national anthems being played before soccer matches, football matches.

Narrator: Kota Ezawa. 

Kota Ezawa: And I honestly always thought those were really key moments of these events because normally everything is in motion and this is the moment of stillness before things spring to action. And there's a lot of tension that that I always was fascinated by.

I never felt a connection to this attitude of patriotism. But then there's these national anthem protests, somehow touched something in me where I all of a sudden felt very connected to the U. S. and to what these players were doing.

Narrator: The act of taking a knee was intended to protest police violence against people of color and racialized injustice in the United States.

Kota Ezawa: While I was working on the piece so many things happened in relation to these protests. The instigator of the protest, Colin Kaepernick, was held out of the sport by the league and then he filed a lawsuit that recently got settled. And all of these developments happened while the work on the piece was going on. So the the story that I was working with was changing constantly. And I have a feeling also that the story will change as the piece ages.