How Black artists in Canada are using hair to express identity and reclaim power | Canada Voices

One of the most staggering works of art I have ever seen was a knotted full-body garment made entirely out of human hair.

It was part of Amartey Golding’s broodingly beautiful exhibition, In the comfort of embers, which ran at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto in 2023. The wearable sculpture was co-created by Kevin Fortune, a London-based celebrity hairstylist and makeup artist. When I asked how it arrived in Canada, I was told it was transported in an oversized custom durag.

The theatrical, thematically rich piece commingles Black hairstyles in its intricate design, speaking to themes of diasporic identity, colonial oppression and the reclamation of power – one of many examples of how hair has become a frequent motif for contemporary Black artists.

Not only does this motif represent tradition and cultural preferences within Black communities, but it’s also a nod to the ongoing oppression many face as hair continues to be a point of racialized othering.

As part of Ontario Culture Days’ fall programming, Nigerian Canadian artist Oluseye is exploring how Black hair is both the medium and the message. Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Pumphouse Arts Centre is hosting an interactive installation by the artist – who has centred hair throughout his practice – as part of its Creatives in Residence series. Entitled Crown Act, Oluseye’s project responds to Southwestern Ontario’s history as a part of the Underground Railroad.

In a note about the work on the Ontario Culture Days website, the artist shared “that the braided hair patterns of enslaved people often contained escape maps, understood by the enslaved peoples but not by their captors.”

Taking its visual inspiration from a photo of a young man’s hairstyle, Crown Act involves a traversable labyrinth (running on-site on Sept. 27 and 28). The enlarged picture will be divided and printed onto concrete pavers, which visitors can move around like puzzle pieces to form a walkable pathway.

“Black hair is art in itself,” Kayla Greaves, a Canadian, New York-based beauty expert and journalist, told me via video call this summer. “I think that there’s no other hair type that can defy gravity in the way that Black hair can.”

My mind immediately leapt to the Ivory Coast-based artist Laetitia Ky, whose work was shown at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Ky is known for her self-portraits in which she sports uncanny sculpted hairstyles. One of her photos in particular caught my eye at Mexico City’s Zona Maco art fair earlier this year, and featured Ky with her hair styled into the fist of the Black Power movement, positioned within the symbol that historically connotes the female sex.

Greaves said that there’s more choice than ever for people wanting to explore their hair’s potential, pointing to the emergence in the last decade of product lines by Rihanna, Beyoncé and Tracee Ellis Ross.

“A lot of women have turned away from relaxers – they don’t want to do them anymore,” Greaves noted. “This entrepreneurial beauty expansion has given women the ability to explore their natural texture.”

This moment has also ushered in more opportunities to see Black hair as a signifier of resilience. This past March, Toronto-based photographer Jamal Burger exhibited a photo series of young Black men sporting an array of hairstyles, including a regal afro ringed with picks, arranged in the shape of a crown.

Burger’s exhibit, titled My Hair is Art: Please Don’t Judge, which ran at the Nia Centre for the Arts, featured models posing in communities across the Greater Toronto Area, including Regent Park. Their hairstyles were created by Burger’s collaborator and the founder of the original My Hair is Art project, Montreal-based artist and hairstylist Yodit Michele.

“I didn’t really see Black hair in its natural form when I was growing up,” Michele said about the inspiration for the series. “My mom is a hairdresser, and every client who came in and out of the salon left with straight hair.”

“I thought, ‘Oh, okay, well that’s how it’s supposed to look.’”

In an August exhibition at Toronto’s United Contemporary gallery, the versatility of Black hair was captured through commanding photographs by Janice Reid, alongside Ojo Agi’s elegant paper works.

Multidisciplinary artist and researcher Ehiko Odeh presented recent pieces made using cyanotype solution on Baltic birch panels. They depicted a series of archival photographs of models in ornate braided hairstyles.

The series, titled Cultural Sanctuary, was initially shown at the Artist Project gallery in Toronto this past spring, as part of a larger installation of the same name. That exhibition included a homemade hair-care mixture made by Odeh, who practices herbalism and uses her art to illuminate the dangerous side of products such as relaxers, historically used to achieve certain Black hairstyles.

“I’ve come to realize that a lot of people that make work about Black hair, in my opinion, mostly focus on hairstyles and maybe the products,” Odeh told me when I met her last year. “I’m also talking about the behind-the-scenes – the ingredients, who makes these products, the marketing and the language that comes with selling things to us.”

While in recent years, the historical and cultural connotations and aesthetic latitudes of Black hair have been amplified in fashion and art, a group exhibition in Toronto last month tackled how racist policies, behaviours and attitudes continue to limit Black expression and identity.

“The show is an opportunity to talk about things like doors being closed,” said arts and culture writer Byron Armstrong, who curated Too Much Fashion – An Ode to Black Creative Resilience with visual artist Ilene Sova.

Armstrong gives the example of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when several corporations committed to more inclusive hiring practices. He recalls thinking to himself: “Well, this door is going to close. When is this door going to start closing?”

“It turns out it started closing with the second presidency of Donald Trump,” Armstrong said. “Now we live in a world where it’s fair for people to say things that they would never say in public before…and it seems like there’s no repercussions for that now.”

Too Much Fashion brought together artistic practices ranging from photography to mixed-media collage in order to articulate the broadness of how Black identity can be outwardly expressed. The exhibition also explored how clothing and hair can act as tools of positive communication and connection.

“A big part of the idea behind this show is to get away from the trauma,” Armstrong said. “But we still wanted to focus on Black community. And I think that fashion is something that’s not just relevant, but accessible for everybody.”