Sonya Clark. The Hair Craft Project: Hairstyles on Canvas, 2013; silk threads, beads, shells, and yarn on canvas; 29 x 29 inches. Courtesy of the Artist and the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA.

The exhibition is structured around a series of nine collaborative pairings, which mark the shared personal and artistic bonds between Clark and her hairdressers. In The Hair Craft Project, photographs of hairstylists and their intricate creation with Clark’s hair sit above a painstakingly sewn pattern on a blank canvas below. Oscillating equally and productively between the applied practice of hairdressing and its appropriation into a fine art object, these dual images encourage the viewer to make linkages between the traditional techniques of fiber arts, such as weaving and embroidery, and the complicated patterns and improvisational designs that elegantly swarm the head of the wearer. The modest smiles that each hairdresser displays in the photographs belie the crisp accuracy and intense manipulations their materials succumb to under their discerning eyes, and reaffirm a historical continuum between the artist and her collaborators. Each braid and twist is a sacred act, bound up with rituals, traditions, and ancestral worship that structure the traumatic history of Black aesthetics. As Clark has stated, slaves removed from Africa “may have arrived empty-handed, but in fact their hands held memories of particular ways of working, making, and moving materials” that they took with them to the “New World.”[2] Thus, these images remind us of the historical continuum that undulates within these embodied material processes.

Sonya Clark. The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya (Jamilah Williams), 2013; inkjet photograph; 28 x 28 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA.

Alongside Clark’s commitment to making the work of these hairdressers visible is a poetic attention to the tools used to gather hair into submission—specifically, fine-tooth combs. The most arresting of these works is Toothless (2014), made up of hundreds of black combs linked together horizontally, stretching wide across a segment of the gallery wall like a tapestry or quilt. As the eye descends from the top to the bottom of the work, the black combs become increasingly “toothless”—the thin black teeth disappear in a staggered rhythm as the work unfurls towards the ground, finally gathering in a shallow pool on the floor. Combs pull at the roots of hair, stretch out kinks, displace knots, and move strands to new positions. In this way, combs are utilitarian, but they also shape and interrupt hair’s “becoming”—its unfurling into space and time. Thus, they resonate as objects that carry forth transformation and creative possibility when used by an experienced practitioner. It is this connection between creativity and becoming that Clark stages in these comb-sculptures, turning these simple objects into metaphors for Black identity, pride, and aesthetic tradition.

Sonya Clark. Toothless, 2014; combs; 75 x 65 x 8 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA.

The climax of the exhibition is Pluck and Grow (2015-present), Clark’s homage to hair as expressed through a participatory installation. The piece invites the viewer to share and reflect upon their own “hair stories,” and to think thoughtfully about the role that hair plays in shaping identity. “For hair is a material that links humans genetically” and is thus inherently bound up with notions of heritage and individuality.[3] Silkscreened stories and poems—some decipherable, some not—are written on brown paper, which are then twisted into hair forms and inserted into the wall. Pluck and Grow invites the exhibition-goer to take a follicle from the wall, read the story, and then replace the “strand” with their own memory about hair written on a white scrap of paper. Over time, the piece becomes “older and wiser” as more brown strands are replaced with new, white ones, carrying within their twisted folds the memories, secrets, and frustrations of all who pass through Clark’s piece. These paper hairs stand in for the follicular foundations of textile work as well as the permutations inherent in one’s own subjectivity—the threads that tie, bind, and link us to our histories and identities, both biological and constructed.

Sonya Clark. Pluck and Grow, 2015-present; dyed paper; 72 x 48 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA.

Follicular: The Hair Stories of Sonya Clark will be on view at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia through May 14, 2017.

[1] My thanks must go to Dr. Amy Moorefield (Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Collections), Ms. Eva Thorton (Curatorial Coordinator), and Ms. Sunny Nelson (Deputy Director of Marketing and Communications) at The Taubman Museum of Art for all their help and support in the writing and researching of this article.

[2] See Dr. Namita Gupta Wigger’s exhibition catalogue essay, “Sonya Clark: Corporeal Materiality,” for the exhibition Sonya Clark at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, Texas, 2011, pg. 11.

[3] Quote pulled from curator Amy Moorefield’s short essay for the Taubman Museum of Art’s exhibition guide to Follicular: The Hair Stories of Sonya Clark.

Sarah Beth Woods. She Bun, 2016; hair weave, chain, door-knocker earrings; 13 x 4 x 9 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

The BRAID/WORK series primarily consists of hair weaves and jewelry coiffed and pinned to foam forms. In She Bun (2016), two perfect chignons seem to float on the wall, with gold “door knocker” earrings woven into the black hair, connected by a thin gold chain. She Bun is almost minimalist in its presentation; like minimalism, it redirects one’s fascination with its precision to its constituent forms. Seeing the abstracted artificial hair and jewelry, a viewer is prompted to read the work’s material—one that, for all its artificiality, distinctly conveys race and gender.

Sarah Beth Woods. BRAID/WORK, 2016; installation view. Courtesy of the Artist and Rootwork Gallery.

Woods admits a fascination with the boundaries between perceptions of the artificial and the natural. It is at these intersections that she begins her collaboration with Traore. But their work concerns more than just a distinction between, say, real and fake hair, or real and fake gold; it explores the technological artifice of gender and the gestural iteration of race. Their work challenges the assumption of biologically constructed identities.

Seen alongside the sculptural pieces are photographs by Cecil McDonald, Jr., an artist interested in masculinity and Black culture, of a braiding performance by Woods and Traore that took place on May 13, 2016, at a warehouse space on Chicago’s West Side. During this event, the Brooklyn- and Nairobi-based artist Celmali Jaime Okonji recited poetry about hair while Woods and Traore worked. These photographs serve not only to document the performance but also to reiterate the critical thrust of the series: There is nothing natural or innate about womanhood or Blackness, and the performance of these identities takes real time, labor, and community to create.

Sarah Beth Woods. A Big Diamond, 2016; hair weave, foam, door-knocker earrings; 67 x 7 x 30 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

This is not to say that race and gender are mere constructions and therefore irrelevant or that they operate identically. Rather, Woods’ work probes at the real boundaries that spring up around these markers of identity. Woods is a white woman who grew up in a primarily Black, middle-class neighborhood of Chicago, and she is highly cognizant of the dangers of appropriation her privilege affords. BRAID/WORK could be read almost voyeuristically, as the desire of white racial power to take the prettiest parts of the ethnic other for itself and discard the less appealing realities of systemic racial abjection.

But with works like A Big Diamond (2016), Woods confronts this desire with her sensitivity to feminist intersectionality. She simultaneously accepts the seductiveness of the abstracted forms of the racial other while she rejects its accessibility to her. The wreath-like form of A Big Diamond bears the braided trappings of Black hair and Black styling, but its decorative ornamental shape emphasizes their superficiality. Woods can shape and mold and braid Black hair, but cannot be Black. The whole of BRAID/WORK explores the limitations of experience in a racist, patriarchal society, but the series also opens up space for more complex interactions beyond complete stratification.

Sarah Beth Woods. DBL RAINBOW SWEET TWIST, 2016; hair weave, foam, photo collage, comb, door-knocker earrings; chain; 50 x 10 x 9 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

The performance aspects of BRAID/WORK insist that the sculptures, for all their formal beauty, are floating signifiers for identities that are more than merely aesthetic. They are parts of an iterative whole, in which the constituent parts are continually reasserted from outside and from within. Woods and Traore show that it takes more than a weave and jewelry to be a woman; it takes work.

Sarah Beth Woods is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist who uses the languages of craft, sculpture, and public engagement to explore the body by employing material culture, artifice, and adornment. Woods studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she focused on assemblage and interdisciplinary studies before returning to Chicago, where she earned a BFA at Northern Illinois University and an MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Her work has been included in shows at the University of Michigan’s Work:Detroit space; Girls Club, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York; the Bob & Roberta Smith Kunstverein at Coventry University, England; New York University, Florence, Italy; and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

DS: So!  Since I haven’t seen you in a while, are you closest to Man, Woman, or Child?

CS: Closest to Child!  But since I’m doing these hair events, I’ve been growing the beard back.  It’s just not very long.  I have scruff, but it’s not a “beard” beard.

Chris Sollars, "Man Woman Child," 2011. 3 Framed C-prints, 20" x 26" each.

DS: I have to ask, which came first, the beard or the art?

CS: Well, even before the beard, I’ve always known that I wanted to make a wig of my long hair, which I’ve had since high school, and wear it at a later date. That’s why the title is Hair and the subtitle is When I’m 64.  I like the collision of those two moments of time—wearing hair from when I was thirty-four when I’m sixty-four.  So I think that piece came first.  As for the beard, I started growing it, and it just turned into its own thing.  My girlfriend took a long trip and by the time she got back, I already had a bunch of things I wanted to do with it.  Before I cut it, I wanted to let it grow a little longer and let it live on its own, and it inspired a series of works.  I’d done a performance in 1998 at Skowhegan where I went to a tool shop in Maine with a lot of old tools and was drawn toward this long handled axe… I personally tried to sharpen it and make a video of me shaving with it.  Of course, I didn’t have much hair back then, because I was 22, and I didn’t have the capacity to grow hair like I do now.  Anyway, I decided that with this new beard I wanted to do it again, with an axe.  Working with my wigmaker, however, I had to grow the beard as long as possible, and if I was going to shave it off with an axe, it wouldn’t work as a wig.  It’s a really a rare thing, to make a wig out of someone’s own beard hair, because you’re hand-knotting, and working with different clumps of hair—looping it like a rug—and it’s a difficult thing, even if your beard is really long, because it’s still so short.

Chris Sollars, "Hair: When I'm 64," 2011-2040. Hand-knotted wig made of human hair. Image courtesy of the artist.

Chris Sollars, "Beard," 2011. Hand-knotted facial hair. Image courtesy of the artist.

DS: It’s probably pretty brittle, too.

CS: Yeah. So I decided to do the beard wig first, and then grow back a beard that was substantial enough to shave off with an axe.  So that was the process.  And in between, before I cut off all the hair, I wanted to do a series of related videos.

DS: Were you intentionally trying to touch on issues of gender and masculinity?

CS: Well, yeah.  I named the triptych (the photographs of myself) Man Woman Child (2011) on purpose, because… Well, a child would never have a beard like that and a woman would never have a beard to that extent.  I’ve always had fine hair, and I’ve always been in between being kind of “girlie” and, well, not.

Chris Sollars, "Shave," 2011. Video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

DS: Shaving your beard with an axe is such an over the top gesture!  And you’re wearing this plaid flannel.  But I noticed that as you started to talk about your work, you weren’t talking about gender as much as you were talking about intersecting moments in time, or an interest in working with certain tools.

CS: Well, [the interest in the axe] led to that.  It led to the absurdity of knowing that I could cut down trees, but that I could also cut my face with the thing!  There’s a moment in the videos where there’s a cut or change or rupture that happens.  I’m thinking of the video edit like I am cutting hair, so there’s a real switch that happens, a change of one’s look, or the change that can happen with a cut when you juxtapose one image with the next.  Leading up to the show, in fact, and even currently, I’ve been hiding out a little bit, just until people have seen that work [and realize that Sollars is now totally clean-shaven]. It’s kind of a strange performance that’s still going on.  I was even wearing costumes to change my identity around town. I didn’t want to reveal that I’d cut my hair until the show had opened.  I realized as soon as I cut my long hair that that pieces like mine and like Chris Burden’s I Became A Secret Hippy (1971) don’t exist as just performances, but as pieces of our identity from that point forward.

Chris Sollars, "Hair Lay," 2011. Video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

Chris Sollars, "Hair Ball," 2011. Video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

Chris Sollars, "Beard Rub," 2011. Video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

DS: What about race? Does that play in at all?  I might be reading more into the project than what you intend, but I read an article in the New York Times about Matta Clark’s Clock Shower (1973), and writer’s spin was about how it was this glorious time in New York when this guy could walk to the top of the Clocktower building and cover himself in shaving cream and then diddle with the clock.  And my thought was yeah, if he’s white, he can do this.  Going from that thought, and looking at your work, which includes this golden ball of hair surveying a forest and the golden blonde Hair Lays and the Beard Rubs, which seem to be about marking or claiming in certain ways, I’m just curious if there are any thoughts about…

CS: …about identity in relation to race?  Well, I think that perception of where I exist culturally, or politically or socially, changes with the haircut.  Going back to Burden’s Secret Hippy, you might be a countercultural person, but you’re wiped of that in terms of your identity.  I guess that’s why I also looked at Ana Mendieta’s piece with the transplanting of the man’s beard onto her face, taking on that masculinity.  Or Adrian Piper’s Mythic Being.  So I’m aware of these female performances and cross cultural performances with hair and identity, and I was thinking, okay, so if there’s this white man art with these things opposed to it or juxtaposed against it, what is white male identity art?  Or what is it specifically to me?  I guess that’s why I focus so much on the hair as a material, like with close-ups of the hair grain, which I think of as wood grain.  Kind of just investigating what is it that my being is made up of.  You know, the scraggly curly beard hair, the long fine hair… What happens when I change?  When I’m separated from it?  How does it exist on its own as an abstraction, like with the Hair Lays, or the beard itself rubbing on things?  I think the masculine action of shaving with an axe kind of completes the picture of that identity of that person.  And I’ve been so influenced by a lot of that ‘70s work that I was curious about performing that investigation on myself.

Loren Schwerd‘s Mourning Portraits provide humanized descriptions of the blight that persists in the years after Hurricane Katrina. Working from her photographs taken in efforts to digest these remnants of life, she rebuilds crumbling artifacts as scrupulous and loving memorials to her community. Out of human hair extensions, discarded near St. Claude Beauty Supply in New Orleans, she depicts her encounter with absent victims. Inspired by the tradition of 18th and 19th century memento mori hair jewelry, she participates in a sentimental activity to honor the deceased. These expressive and elegant constructions allow the viewer an extended gaze into this dark topic, beyond its sheer mass that obscures individual identities.

With found hair extensions, she addresses modern hair braiding in the African-American community, which has important functions beyond beauty and social status. It is a common activity, but requires skilled and quick handiwork learned through tradition. Often taking place within the family or between members of the same sex, it provides an opportunity for strengthening social ties and instilling values. By using hair of many colors, including deep reds, blacks, grays, and bleached-browns, she brings an array of persons into dialogue.

In 1317 Charbonnet St., the frayed ends of braids decorated with beads makes the use of hair apparent. Fading from the black roof to the color of rich clay seems to reference the line of the receded flood, but also resembles roots of stylized hair now grown out from the scalp. Windows allow for interior views that are vacant, with white gallery walls gleaming through Charbonnet Near Rocheblave St. depicts a floorless home cast onto a power pole, set in place by surrounding grass and asphalt. It allows for a complex interior view through a hole in the roof that reveals blackened broken beams, possibly referencing the mold that overtakes flood-ravaged areas.

The home at 1812 Tuepelo St. occupies a sagging mesh grid. Like empty city streets, there’s infrastructure without human beings or community. Grass grows up walls and in cracks, suggesting a slow and difficult reclamation. In Arc, a ponytail tied with a bow is suspended upward and braided rows of hair dangle from the bottom of this home that’s been crushed to abstraction. The work appears like a duplex, a merging of two persons or time periods, held together by a jumble of small parts. Diverging from her more realistic renderings, the hairstyles are bold, accentuating the facelessness of this portrait.

These structures appear both strong and flimsy, a contrast that illuminates their potency. These are dilapidated buildings, supported by metal wire and mesh, but made of soft enduring hair, a material more resistant to decay than wood. Braiding and bundling together creates rigidity, sheltering each single strand in tight, intricate textures. She bloats a gendered reading of the work by depicting these architectural spaces. Using methods and traditions that have been historically considered feminine, she remakes objects commonly of masculine design and construction that have failed to serve their purpose, left in a state to be reclaimed by nature. The body of work includes depictions of homes, but also includes flowers, trees, limbs, strands of beads, and other organic forms.

Loren Schwerd, Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, achieved her BFA at Tulane University and MFA at Syracuse University. She was an instructor and visiting professor at College of Charleston, SC, from 1995 to 2005. Her sculpture, performance art, and videos have been shown at universities and galleries nationally. Mourning Portraits has been exhibited at Prospect.1 in New Orleans and was featured on the cover of the November/December issue of Fiberarts Magazine. It is currently on display at the Sumter Gallery of Art in Sumter, SC until Dec 31.