Spring 2024 Showcase Whittington

​Southern skateboarders rarely learn in a concrete jungle. Most of the time they live in an actual jungle, where everything is covered in kudzu and deep craters cut through the landscape. Because of the South’s rural landscapes and lack of infrastructure, places like the skatepark are vital to their survival. These public spaces can provide a space for friendships, protection from trespassers, and ensure the passing down of knowledge.
​Skateboarding Allowed explores the significance of the skatepark, through the relationships between the body, architecture, and the construction of space. In Skateboarding, Space, and the City: Architecture and the body by Iain Borden, Borden explains that skateboarding “produces space, but also time and the self. Skateboarding is constantly repressed and legislated against, but counters not through negative destruction but through creativity and production of desire…” Drawing from the research of philosopher Henri Lefebrve, Borden examines skateboarding through the lens of space and placemaking.
​The photographs in this project focus on skateboarders who live in Oxford and Lafayette County, Mississippi and the area’s general landscapes. Some photographs stand alone while others are combined. The collaged images echo the skateboarder’s process of creating new spaces and landscapes.
The Southern skateboarder’s identity is tied to the landscape in ways West and East Coast skateboarders are not. For the Southern skateboarder, skateable spaces are sacred, and they have to continuously reinvent themselves and their spaces.