If Hair Could Talk

i’ve been working to change the way i

speak and write

to incorporate in the manner of telling

a sense of place of not just who i am in

the present

but where i’m coming from the multiple

voices within me

i am starting my tedx talk with the

spell hooks quote from the book

yearning race gender and cultural

politics

as i would talk from my own voice but

the voice of many black british women

and their experience with her

my name is jade adiami i’m an art

director and set designer

today i’ll be talking about activism

through hair specifically black hair

within the realms of identity and art

why hair you may wonder because the

designs consolidated on the head of a

black woman

are defined by both their heritage and

environment

it is a hybrid i will begin by

re-encounting

the heritage or history of black hair

before explaining my activism

in my art hair is something we all have

it grows out of all surfaces of our body

but yet the hair around our face

shapes our face it frames it

specifically for black women

it frames us our identity and the way

people interact with us

when looking specific at the hairstyles

of black women during and predating the

atlantic slave trade

it was noted that slaves often shaved

different shapes into another’s hair

stars and half moons

they were they were engraved using

broken bits of glass

this highlights that even during the

most oppressed times

the preservation of hair still took

precedence within black culture

moreover the use of patterns to ornate

shaved black heads

is the agricultural practice within

african carbon communities

across the world such as the use of

knight ticks and adidas stripes

and more recently kanye west shaving the

2020

sign in his head for his presidency

presidential election

but also previous use such as the

friendly pattern

engraved into his head cornrows predated

back before the slave trade

and these braiding patterns mimic

architectural silhouettes in african

buildings

and textiles present in an african

woman’s everyday environment

typically bridges and huts this is

because the tight cars

in african hair lends itself to a kind

of architectural form which is evident

in jd

archive or jacare’s photography series

based around

hair designs where you will see many

distinguished structures visible

further than this architectural styles

cornrows

were used to identify what tribe one was

from and also country

but over time during the slave trade

they became a tour for survival

providing gateways to freedom as they

use these cornrow patterns to send

secret messages to one another

and escape routes from plantations

this shows and raises the question of

form vs function

as both these were important to the

survival of black women

especially as mothers would weave seeds

and aqua into their children’s hair

before potentially be separated for

enslavement

this was an innovative skill that meant

that they would have food and crops for

themselves on the new land especially

they didn’t know whether they’d be

separated from their child

nappy hair is a connotation coined and

linked to people of

african and caribbean descent since the

atlantic slave trade in the 17th century

it is the natural form which hair grows

being tightly coiled and curled

that wasn’t is often associated with

having bad hair

today reclaiming the phrase through

positive use

ogilvy campaign has done this and

changed the narrative around natural

hair

i furthered this through my own practice

and questioned how i could do this

which i have done through such things as

illustrations and directs

good hair was never represented by the

african hairstyle that shaped the 16th

and 70s

black pride and black power movement

which was intertwined with the black as

beautiful equipment

the afro shape held more of an

inhaler-like shape

it held the debate of form versus

function as one could choose to shape

their hair in this way

or use it as a political platform to

represent their pride resistance

resilience and rebellion nonetheless one

of the shortcomings of intersectionality

is that it provides a framework for

understanding oppression

and not exploitation whereas to truly

understand the black feminist

theory you must understand the defining

links between the systems of

exploitation and oppression of cultural

homogeny

which leaves us black women’s standard

of beauty hair and identity to be set

upon the white upper class

black people have rewritten the shaping

of this through the expressions of proud

identities such as the cultivation of

art in the negative

movement women in the afro

and the expression of the black power

movement

the african 5 is a presentation of black

power and black pride

as evolved in corporate designs of the

blackfist in support of the black power

movement

a memoir we remember today as we strike

the comb through our hair

the tool of the afrocone was

simultaneously used as a tool

that represented the liberation of black

people and their hairstyles

in regards to their identity although

the afros

is the resilience of imperialism through

its shape in both art form

and makeup it was associated with

cultivated style quintessentially

african

but was shaped around what this was

modeled to be africa

it was a modern mode of survival and

continuation

of a proud black culture

the effort could be regarded as a

tribute to the nostalgia for lost

origins

for pastimes encompassing a pivotal turn

from turning political to becoming a

fashion statement it is the rejection to

the accepted social norms

structured aesthetics of hair design

remain prominent within the 21st century

exemplified through artists such as

meshach gaba whose wigs reflect the

ancient ways of women

shaping their hair based on bridges and

architectural buildings

the modern twist is that he’s formed

complex geometric

patterns with wigs based on modern

buildings which shows his playful

restructure

in the relationship between the western

world and african origins

interlocking the practices of ancestors

with dyed aspers

through the craft of art and shaping

their identity based on part of their

future

the diaspora aesthetic called by stuart

hall is read through art and design

becoming more prominent through the

visual aspects of music videos

through the music video i did vein which

i art directed

we are able to show that hair is a

complex matter that is entangled within

us

the way we are seen and defined it can

be both loving but also destructive but

to some extent

it is everlasting the hair of black

women is and has always been politicized

and now we are seeing a movement of

black women reclaiming their hair and

identities

here’s the coding surroundings of a

person’s face and attributes to their

beauty

when talking hair we must talk beauty as

black women are not recognized within

many of these standards i will be

discussing the social mirror

that has been threaded in the barbie

complex and suppression of expression

through hair

as mainstream culture has rejected and

demonized black women’s beauties and

bodies

leaving us with pre-conditioned

whiteness as a standard of beauty

it is a form of social control as we

only see it through the narrow

perspective

black female bodies have been devalued

or negated

from the mainstream to the extent when

seen it is often accepted

only to be exoticized rather than

measuring up to the normal standard of

beauty

the best way to understand what

mainstream beauty is is from the

definition given by ingrid

banks in hair matters ideal beauty

blonde pale skinned with blue eyes

embodies everything the average black

woman lacks black beauty

seems to be always fitting within

another’s version of the other

consumption especially as europeans

frame the black female body

as being harsh and aggressive

it can be argued that the absence of

black images in the social mirror

leaves the black child with little other

than white subjects for self-reflection

and self-projection however we must

acknowledge that this cannot simply be

reduced to wanting to be

of another color the complexity of the

social mirror is not just how society

sees black women

but how black women view themselves in

society

it is arguable that one can easily

suppress one’s blackness to reflect

what mass media offers as a standard of

beauty

these destructive issues of black beauty

are evident within adverts such as dove

which evokes stereotypes of black women

not being the epitome of beauty

standards

as an advert shows a woman transforming

her body from being black to white

emphasizing that white beauty is the

finished

product black beauty is seen in the

mainstream media when its

hand has been forced such as now as

brands have been outed for having

only caucasian models and feeds such as

on instagram

and have now started to largely hire

black women

for this for the mainstream media but

we’ll see how long this lasts

analyzing media infiltrations of beauty

one can see the need to re-educate

specifically black women and their

relationship to her their hair

such as barbie an iconic figure in many

young children’s childhoods in my

generation there were only caucasian

barbies whereas now their bibles have

varied ethnicities

sizes and hair textures marking

a great inclusive progression but is

this inclusive progression

something that is active within the

workforce where microaggressions are

felt on a daily basis from the touching

of black people’s hair

and asking if that is someone’s real

hair you paid for it so it’s yours

and not everything is a weave these are

questions that black women have

to ask themselves on a daily basis for

what people may ask them

at their workplace

should i take a holiday day to sit and

get my hair done for six plus

hours what will happen to my hair if i

get caught in the rain

how shall i wear my hair for the

interview how many questions will i get

at work

when i change my hairstyle will my

colleagues ask to touch my hair

will my colleagues touch my hair without

asking

will they ask how my hair grew so

quickly

will they ask how long my real hair is

if hair could talk

stemmed from my hair being police the

whole time i was at school

from the color sometimes it would be

mixed with black and gray which would

seem to be

a false color and to having the addition

of beads in my hair sometimes

but yet my white counterpart who would

have pink dip dyed hair

would never be asked to change their

hair so

once leaving school and starting uni i

felt relieved that i would no longer be

restricted anymore

but there was an occasion where one of

my tutors on my art foundation

called me the wrong name he excused it

by saying

ah you change your hair more times than

there are days in the week

which was both patronizing and untrue it

got me thinking

how come i really questioned why i

frequently change my hair

why the star has always varied and never

repeated in the past four years

and during this time i subconsciously

monitored the different reactions from

people

whilst changing my hairstyles this was

the beginning of his haircut talk

it is based on the black british

experience as many of the sources found

were american sources our narrative as

black british females has always been

pitched within the american

women’s experience as a whole but

not independently as a british i called

my project this but also my tedx talk

this

as regina george and mean girls once

said about gretchen wina’s hair

the hair was so big because it was full

of secrets

she was not mistaken as traditionally

the history of africans was passed down

by all history

the passing down of words and stories

our hair holds both memories and the

stories of our ancestors

the past is intertwined with our present

and future

i actively needed my project to record

the stories and thoughts of black women

in their hair

i needed my project to hold the space of

a gallery which is often seen as

predominantly a white space in both

artists that occupy it

and share it with their work and the

viewers

i wanted to be unapologetic in the south

in the size

which is five meters wide by two meters

high and the poetry echoing through the

speakers

my hair is a microphone it speaks

volumes

the sight for sore eyes my curls lie

confused

lips purse to form the funnel of a

trumpet and from there my utter sounds

and syllables rhymes and rhythmic

through the tale of wisdom and truth

amplified by the coils of my roots

i care for the curls of my keratin with

coconut cream

cocktails tea tree oil on the top

shelves shea buttered steamed

circumcised and a silk veil my scalp

inscribed with majesty

the texture defying gravity a land of

undiscovered mysteries the land of the

unknown

i plow the fields of madness with my

wooden afro comb you could never

comprehend the afrocentric way

never come to terms with my tangled

textured maize it’s my

dna intertwined ivy

substance seeping high fee to relax

would be a tragedy

my inspiration for my project was every

black guy that wanted straight hair

as i did when i was age seven and i saw

my classmate caitlyn skipping across the

playground with her hair swinging from

side to side

my inspiration is every black girl who

picks a white doll over a black doll

as they believe the black doll to be bad

ugly and

or possibly lesser than the white doll

my work was meant for those who

resonated with the stories to show that

they were not alone in their thoughts

of their hair and learning to reclaim

its beauty but also it was meant for

those

with a lack of understanding of black

women and their hair

i was met with many questions and i

encourage these questions

because for these people because it took

for these people to step back

reflect on their own actions and the

actions of their groups but also the

media

because rarely do you see black women

with afros and adverts

or black women talking about their hair

so openly today my work

continues to have activism within it

both in the design

and the production of teams that are

actively inclusive

i continuously work to create personal

work that questions and mainstream

ideals surrounding black women

their beauty and their hair with hair

focused as one of the main structures

within many of my pieces i’m jaded and

thank you for listening