Artist Statement
My work is primarily based on black empowerment, acceptance, and self-love. I’m focusing on issues like skin bleaching the epidemic that’s plaguing the black community and the natural hair movement. For this I look to an artist like Koine Grandison who creates collages from a wide range of source materials, adapting imagery from hair salon packaging, black hair magazines and photography books such as Hairstyles. J.D. Ojeikere’s seminal series which sought to document the intricate hairstyles worn by African women throughout the 20th century. By merging imagery of African and European hair styling, Grandison’s work comments on the Western hair industry’s appropriation of black beauty ideals and vice versa.
I make work that points out issues within the black community that I have witnessed other black women struggle with and that I have personally struggled with. Like anti-black behavior and practices, along with toxic language. But I also try to celebrate black empowerment, acceptance, and self-love through my work. I use sculpture and collages to express these. I am currently making a series of sculptures using a bread dough recipe that I learned from my grandmother. My grandmother only spoke Tswana, that I understood very little of. But she would always let me help her bake, and baking became a language that we could both understand and connect to each other through. Making these sculptures quickly became about making a community for myself, a community of black women. I never had an amount that I wanted to make but it felt like the more I made, the bigger the community that there needed to be. Using dough as a source of sculpture has been a constant theme in my practice because baked goods will usually put anyone at ease. That’s how I want the viewer going into my work so there are open to receiving the issue I try to communicate. The baked dough heads are crowned with synthetic hair, braided into traditional African style’s, decorated with beads, hair wraps, and wiring. I use traditional techniques because I am an active supporter or the Natural Hair Movement, I use braiding techniques that have been passed down to the women in my culture through generations, that were used to celebrate and emphasize the best aspects of afro-textured hair.
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I am a young black woman born in South Africa and raised in Brittan. As a young black woman, I find it important to reflect and report on the everyday experiences of black women. I make the type of work that I do to open up a dialog to have honest conversations on topics like why skin bleaching epidemics are still breaking out in Kenya, Jamaica and other black communities, but are not being openly talked about. Black women’s bodies are constantly picked apart and scrutinized, black features like big bums, big lips, and tan skin are never as celebrated on black women then as they are on other ethnicities of women. I aim to promote self-love and care for black women.