Photo courtesy of Nefertari Pierre-Louis.
Planted prominently on a pedestal box in the Cummings Art Center is a graffitied salon chair draped with lengths of oversized loc’s. The abstract display is both bold and magnetic, pulling at students who enter the building for class or studio work, turning their hurried strides into slow, curious steps around the gallery. Above the piece is the word “NAPPY”, five letters formed against black hair, reclaimed and repurposed by curator Juanita Austin. The exhibition is an ode to the cornrows, coils, and curls stigmatized and weaponized by the Eurocentric eye. We’re amidst an age where black hair is asking to be hair, not policed, not political, and not a representation of character. NAPPY exhibits the work of nine artists whose art speaks to the power, struggle, and beauty of blackness.
Our country teeters on a very thin line, swaying shamelessly between progress and the evident lack of it. For Black Americans, the CROWN Act (a law that prohibits race-based hair discrimination) is yet another distressing sign that society has merely inched forward. Black hair has long suffered the effects of social degradation, straightening itself to appease the white gaze, forgetful of the fact that it is not the afro that perturbs them, but the skin color representing it. Defying the push to perm one’s Black girl curls, deemed “unprofessional” and “unkempt” in classrooms and the workplace, continues to be a rebellious act of self-love, strength, and sacrifice.
“My hair does not want to be colonized. I realized this and I loc’d it” says featured photographer Bizzie R. Through her lens we view Blackness in its candid form, untouched by stereotypes and harmful narratives, beautifully radiant and kind. Her work appears in a gallery room adjacent to the main exhibition hall; inside, part of a salon is arranged. Thick combs, perming products, a straight wig, and flat irons clutter the table to evoke, in the Black women, recollections of nights under a vanity light as the firm hands of a stylist washes, parts, and pulls your hair into a look.
On the surrounding walls are two compelling pieces by multidisciplinary artist KIN. Her framed illustrations, “Tender Headed” and “The Kitchen”, draw inspiration from the depth and design of a tarot deck, inviting the viewer to reminisce on significant household spaces where conversations poured as hair was groomed and detangled.
For exhibiting artist Greg Aimé, art and technology merge to gift viewers an enhanced visual experience. His Afrofuturist collages bloom with animation through the Artivive app, which allows visitors to snapshot his work and await its neat, visual distortion.
NAPPY is a plunge into the deep duality of Black art, which at its most vulnerable state, merges personal pain with the pain of navigating societal racism. Giants of the Black art canon are weaving the ache of racial troubles with their own personal troubles, courageously molding pain and injustice into masterpieces. The salon chair and its dramatic decoration of locs, placed in the center of Cummings’ glossy gallery floors, symbolize the space Black hair and Black people can, and should, take up.
