Let’s Talk About Hair and Art

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to critically reflect upon a cultural text in the form of a piece of mixed media abstract realism artwork titled Hair Power, made in 2020. This piece was inspired and motivated by my involvement with a World Afro Day event held on 15 September 2020. The paper draws on my personal, political, cultural, and historical rationale for making the artwork, and includes relevant background information and wider influences. I discuss the artistic process — composition, colour scheme, themes, materials— and how and why I made the painting the way I did. The paper also aims to show the intertextuality of visual art and community activism and the importance of art as a form of resistance against Westernised beauty standards and of the power of images in their ability to transport the audience in which they are intended. This paper will also seek to understand the connectivity between artists and the community, and the importance of representation within the visual arts. It will draw on my cultural heritage and African and Caribbean diasporic cultural connections. It will further seek to connect art with literary projects, working together to challenge those ideologies that do not work for Black people who choose to wear their afro hair in its natural state, so that pride is more important than hiding or changing afro hair to fit into society’s ‘norms’. Hair Power is a piece of personal and political abstract realism art that was made as a reminder that afro hair in its natural state is to be celebrated. Hair Power was also one of two pieces of artwork integrated as a symbolic gesture into my Birkbeck College “Race Law and Literature” assignment in April 2021. The assignment involved writing a creative nonfiction narrative of a historical event using the theme of everyday racism in the British education system. Hair Power marks my decision to make more political art.