2011 Roland-Garros Championships

Initially trained as a sculptor, Barthélémy Toguo has explored many artistic mediums, turning to watercolor painting in 1998. Intentionally provocative with his art, he often explores the themes of globalization, borders, exile, and displacement and their effects on the ecology, society, and environment at large. To the artist, humans and nature are inseparable. His abstract tennis ball tree, fixated into place on court, represents the means of communication between the players on opposite sides of the net competing in the most global of sports.