100% Kanekelon

2021

Collision Gallery

New Currency: Trading Floor

August 13 - 14, 2022

Black hair magazines have been a consistent object throughout my life, sitting in the periphery; a page torn out and plastered to the wall of a barbershop or buried under a pile of leave-in conditioners. The image of a black woman exists in my mind and she has 1001 different hairstyles rotating like the selection menu of an online makeover game.

100% Kanekelon is a series of 5 collages, built from the clippings of Black hair and beauty publications, which were then packaged along with a clipping of synthetic hair. Evoking memories of the beauty supply store and the hair salon, the packaged collages are then hung on pegs with similarly packaged reproductions.

The collages are an act of reconstruction, meant to trigger recollection for some and spark curiosity in others.

This work was shown as an installation which included an interactive, community-building aspect whereby visitors could add their own clippings to a collective collage wall.