Awol Erizku's Spin in a Drop (2022) is a monumental mixed-media painting that exemplifies the artist’s innovative approach to merging cultural commentary with striking visual compsition. Executed on industrial aluminium panels, the work juxtaposes the sublime beauty of cosmic imagery captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope with the raw materiality of exposed photographic film taken from Erizku’s own 35mm camera, used to document everyday moments in his studio practice. Affixed to the surface of the work is a basketball hoop, surrounded by raw accents of spray paint recalling the immediacy of street art. The interplay of these elements evokes a sense of time suspended, where the celestial and the terrestrial converge to produce a work of both immediacy and universality. Drawing inspiration from the urban landscape of Los Angeles, Erizku incorporates references to graffiti tags – territory-marking signatures of street artists – which often adorn the city’s public spaces and commercial façades. The aesthetic of graffiti removal, with mismatched patches of paint or buffed areas left behind as traces of these erased marks, informs the composition’s bold use of colour and texture. The painting’s vivid spray-painted sections mimic the effects of this process, alluding to the tensions between public expression and erasure in urban environments.

An integral element of Spin in a Drop is the inclusion of a basketball hoop affixed to the surface, transforming the work into a dynamic and interactive sculptural composition. The hoop, positioned against the cosmic backdrop and layered graffiti-inspired textures, invites associations with both urban culture and the expansive themes suggested by the celestial imagery. Unlike Erizku's earlier basketball hoop sculptures, which featured overtly diasporic symbols such as Black Panther Party motifs and African masks, this iteration opts for a more subtle approach. The absence of direct cultural signifiers allows the piece to reach a broader audience, encouraging viewers to engage with the work on multiple levels – from reflections on street culture and sports to the universal experience of aspiration and transcendence. The basketball hoop thus becomes a symbol of play, struggle, and achievement, resonating across cultural and social contexts while grounding the work’s cosmic and existential themes in the tangible reality of everyday life.

Erizku’s practice is distinguished by a distinctive visual language that spans a wide range of influences, from urban culture to the art historical canon, creating an idiosyncratic dialogue between past and present. In Spin in a Drop his choice of materials and iconography probes complex themes of race, identity, and politics, while also engaging with broader existential questions about time, space, and the human condition. The juxtaposition of NASA’s deep-space imagery with the immediacy of street art establishes a layered narrative, where the infinite vastness of the cosmos is brought into conversation with the everyday realities of contemporary life.

The textured aluminium surface, with its reflective quality, adds another layer of meaning, suggesting the mutable nature of perception and memory. As light plays across the work, the viewer’s experience of the composition shifts, mirroring the elusive qualities of time itself. The use of photographic film introduces a personal dimension, as Erizku's documentation of his studio activities infuses the work with an autobiographical element, anchoring the otherwise cosmic imagery in the artist’s own lived experience.

By combining high and low cultural references, from the grandeur of Hubble’s celestial photography to the everyday aesthetics of graffiti culture, Erizku bridges disparate worlds, challenging conventional distinctions between fine art and urban expression. The result is a dynamic interplay of abstraction and representation, where cultural history and personal experience intersect within a monumental framework that defies easy categorisation. Spin in a Drop stands as a powerful testament to Erizku’s ongoing exploration of the complexities of identity and the socio-political dynamics of visibility and erasure.