Visibility is a Trap: Living on the Edge of a Bell Curve - 2017

As a Black woman, visibility can feel like a blessing or a trap. For this project, I used synthetic braiding hair as representative of our cultural expressions of beauty to form strands of connectedness. These strands, and symbolic persons, are positioned on a metal rod that mimics the effect of a bell curve. By doing this, I acknowledge and communicate the way in which my identity is more easily understood through the representation of statistics than through true familiarity. The distinction of these features is further emphasized by the white space that surrounds it. The white yarn also acts as a signifier of ways in which some attempt to strangle and suppress their otherness in order to blend into the background. These binary scenarios are the choices a black body must decide, to be othered, or to conform.