A five-storey mural celebrating Indigenous cultures has been unveiled in New York after being commissioned by Australian basketballer Patty Mills’s foundation and his team the Brooklyn Nets.
The spectacular mural on the side of a school building in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park was created by artist Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez and depicts a First Nations woman and a Native American woman against a background of water.
Mills and his team wanted the work – called Indigenous Flow – to “honour Australian Indigenous culture but also wanted to recognise and celebrate the Indigenous people of New York, and the communities currently living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York,” Quiñonez said.
“Team Mills [Foundation] and I collaborated with the Redhawk Native American Art Council and its leaders to discuss what’s important in the message we would like to convey. It was clear for everyone that representation of multiple cultures are important as well as the beauty of indigenous cultures.
“The two women represent strength, honour, and unity among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have the same connection to nature, humanity and this planet as the Ramapo Munsee Lunaape Nation.”
Quiñonez said one of the most important elements of the mural is the large circular motion of water.
“The water represents the most precious thing nature has to offer all living things and an absolute necessity,” he said. “It’s also a symbol for connectivity and voyage. It was our ancestors who had the courage to travel this planet through the vast ocean and plant seeds that would take root which later became this incredibly diverse human race that are all connected.
The Indigenous Flow mural was officially unveiled over the weekend by Mills, Quiñonez and the Redhawk Native American Arts council at a block party in Sunset Park.
Mills acknowledged how the multicultural communities in the city had made him feel at home in Brooklyn. “This is a very special place I’ve never been anywhere like this before,” he said at the event.
“And as you can see from the turnout today, and the diversity that there is, only a couple of blocks from our practice facility, it has been really heartwarming and welcoming to me and my wife and a place where we’ve felt welcomed with open arms.”
The Boomers captain has spoken previously about being drawn to street art in the city when he made the move there in 2021 from the San Antonio Spurs.
“The art, the street art, all that kind of stuff has helped me understand what the community of Brooklyn is all about,” he told Murals for the Movement, a public art initiative by Street Theory, where Quiñonez is creative director.
“Very quickly I’ve felt drawn to that,” Mills said. “The street art definitely has meaning to it … there’s messaging behind it of being able to bring people together.”
Quiñonez said street art is important for “underserved communities who don’t have resources to visit galleries and museums”.
“It’s also a global issue that Bipoc cultures are not represented in museums, and cultural institutions in the same level and respect as European cultures. It’s our responsibility to empower our communities and show the world our beauty and strength through art.”
Mills has always been an advocate for social justice, and in 2020 launched Team Mills Foundation with the simple aim of helping people and communities. In the same year, during the NBA’s Covid hiatus, he created Indigenous Basketball Australia to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people overcome some of the challenges they face in the existing Australian basketball system – so they might succeed at higher levels like Mills has.
