Like so much of the Internet, I reacted with some glee at the pictures from Dwayne Wade's statue ceremony in front of the Kaseya Center in Miami, FL this past week. Dwayne Wade is a well-decorated former basketball superstar, a three-time NBA champion. He played thirteen seasons for the Miami Heat, and the organization decided to make a bronze statue in his likeness to honor him.
Unfortunately, the face on the statue did not resemble Dwayne Wade. The Internet was abuzz in mockery, and I was laughing at all of it. How could the artists of this statue, Omri Amrany and Oscar León, get his facial features so wrong? The face is mildly contorted and you have to work really hard to see the resemblance.
The next day I read a piece on The Athletic following up with Wade on the reaction. He was not defensive about the statue's initial impression. "I don't know know a lot of people with a statue. Do you?" I admired the defiance in this statement. In an interview on the Miami Heat's YouTube channel, he seemed completely humbled. He recognized he was being immortalized.
I am on an email list from artist Danny Gregory. In one of his essays ("The art spirit"), he reminds us that artistry exists in everyone, and that every artist sees the world differently. It took Omri and Oscar ten months to create this statue, and even though everyone can like or tweet a criticism, none of it can diminish the meaning of this statue to its creators and its subject.
It's pretty fun to joke, to mock, to pile on. But after reading and listening to how much the statue means for Dwayne, after learning about its many personal details, I think I'll stop laughing as hard. Years from now, people will look at this in wonder. They will look up his records, watch his plays, and learn what he meant to his team. They'll look at this statue in awe.
