Performances + Projects
Translations
Venues:
Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia, October 8, 2016 (with Kamala Bhagat)
Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, Nebraska, June 23, 2018 (with Jamilah Williams)
Description:
I read poems written in Twist (a glyph I created in collaboration with graphic designer, Bo Peng, to look like hair clippings.) The poems by African American poets (Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Audre Lorde, and Nikki Giovanni) are hair themed. As I struggle to decipher the text and read it aloud to the crowd who has a translation, a hairstylist, gives me a hairstyle based on one I wore as a child when I was learning to read.
Haircut for a Poem
Venues:
O, Miami Poetry Festival, Florida, Just Right and Praise the Lord barbershops, April 15, 2016
USA Artists Arts Council, National Young Arts Headquarters, April 16, 2016
Description:
I created an opportunity to interface hair, poetry, and culture by engaging black men in this event. Participating barbershops in Little Haiti and OverTown, two traditionally black neighborhoods in Miami, gave free haircuts to gentleman who recited Calvin Hernton’s The Distant Drum. In addition, hairdresser, Simone Hilton, and barber, G, braided and barbered USA Artist Fellows who recited the Hernton poem at the closing event of the USA Artists Arts Council.
Unraveling
Venues:
Mixed Greens Gallery, New York, NY June 11, 2015
Nasher Art Museum, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, August 31 and October 20, 2016
The Speed Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, October 14, 2017
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA, November 4, 2017
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, February 21 and April 5, 2018
Description:
I work with gallery and museum audiences to slowly unravel a confederate battle flag thread by thread, shoulder to shoulder. The initial performance, in New York, occurred nine days before Dylann Roof’s racially motivated murders in Charleston, South Carolina.
Hairdressers Are My Heroes
Venues:
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, October 12, 2015 (with Kathy Montrevil)
University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass - Amherst, March 5, 2018 (with Kamala Bhagat)
Description:
I work with hairstylists to create interpretations of a hairstyle as depicted on an African sculpture in the gallery or museum on my head. The performance blurs the boundaries between public and private space and the art gallery and salon. Audience members are engaged in dialogue with hairstylist and me about the intersections of hairdressing, culture, race politics, and art.
Pluck and Grow: Hair Stories
Venues:
Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Gibbes Art Museum during Spoleto Festival, Charleston, South Carolina
Germantown Academy, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania
Taubman Museum, Roanoke, Virginia
Description:
I conduct writing workshops and gather participants’ reflections about their hair. These are written and silkscreened on paper. The paper is dyed, twisted, and arranged to look like hairs growing from a wall. Other participants pluck one of the dyed hair stories, read it, write a new story on white paper, twist it to make it into a ‘hair’, and replace the plucked story. The piece turns white as it ages (or greys) with the newly added hair stories.
The Hair Craft Project
(Catalogue included in mailing)
117-page catalogue, published 2015
Artist edited and cited throughout
Venues:
1708 Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
Art Prize, Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts and additional venues
Hair Craft Project, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
Description:
I began with the closest salon to my home and worked my way by word-of-mouth to other black hairstylists in Richmond salons. They were supplied with my head of hair and a canvas hand stitched with silk thread. The challenge was to demonstrate their expertise in a familiar medium, hair, and translate it into a less familiar one, thread on canvas. The project was based on the premise that hairdressers are also fiber artists. For the span of the project, I became a walking art gallery of their hairstyles. The photographs document hairstyles created specifically for the project while the canvases provide a permanent example of the craft. The stylists featured in the project are Kamala Bhagat, Dionne James Eggleston, Marsha Johnson, Chaunda King, Anita Hill Moses, Nasirah Muhammad, Jameika and Jasmine Pollard, Ingrid Riley, Ife Robinson, Natasha Superville, and Jamilah Williams. The inaugural exhibit invited jurors (Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims and A’lelia Bundles) and members of the public to cast their votes for the best in show.
Sounding the Ancestors
Venues:
Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, Virginia, February 21, 2014 (with Susana Klein)
Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts, February 20, 2018 (with Regina Carter)
Description:
My curiosity about how DNA sounds led me to collaborate with musicians to hear bows I had re-haired with human hair played on violins. National and collective identity led me to select two anthems: James Weldon Johnson's Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing and Francis Scott Key's Star-Spangled Banner. A studio recording was created in collaboration with Regina Carter and remastered by Jason Moran.
The Beaded Prayers Project
60-page catalogue, published 2013
Artist cited throughout and pp. 5 - 7, 42 – 46
Venues:
Details on cv (pp. 14-15)
Over 30 national + international venues
Over 150 lectures + workshops
Description:
I began this project to engage a wide audience in an activity that has ancient roots. The collaborative project has had over 5000 participants from 30 nations based on the shared etymology of the words ‘bead’ and ‘prayer’ and amulet traditions. Participants write down hopes, aspirations, and prayers and seal them in beaded packets.