In advance of its first-ever regular season game in Paris on Sunday, the National Football League announced NFL Color Field—“a new platform that brings football and visual arts together through large-scale installations, original programming and immersive cultural experiences,” as a press release describes it.
Over the coming weekend, a painting by Jammie Holmes will figure in hand-painted end zones created for a flag-football field that will be set up beneath the Eiffel Tower as part of an NFL Experience Paris installation. A Louisiana native and recent fellow at Paris’s Académie des beaux-arts and Cité internationale des arts, Holmes is a fan of the New Orleans Saints, who will play the Pittsburgh Steelers in the City of Light.
The new initiative is an off-shoot of NFL Artist Replay, a program launched in 2023 “to spotlight diverse artistic voices and celebrate the stories, identities, and cultural perspectives that shape the world of football.” In Paris and also in another iteration planned for Miami Art Week in December, NFL Color Field—curated by Jasmine Martin of Pivotal Arts—“builds on that foundation, anchoring each moment with a signature artist partnership and large-scale installation that transforms a football field into a canvas for original artwork.”
Holmes, who recently discovered that his great-grandfather was stationed in France and visited Montmartre during World War I, said, “There’s something powerful about bringing a piece of Louisiana and Saints fandom to Paris, especially knowing that my own family’s history stretches across both places. So much of my art is about the things we carry with us, like our memories, our families and our backgrounds.” He continued: “I hope it shows young people that creativity is possible for them too—that they can take their own stories and roots and turn them into something that reaches the world.”