Research Projects
Black Hair as Portal: a Practice of Sovereignty, Stewardship, and Refusal
A research and art thesis examining Black hair as speculative method, archive, and site of sovereignty. The thesis spans installation, writing, community inquiry, and pedagogical practice.
Abstract
Black hair is a force of cultural memory, self-definition, and resistance. Its presence insists upon recognition, carrying resonance, rootedness, and sovereignty. This thesis positions Black hair not merely as a symbol or aesthetic but as a living methodology. The ontological principles rooted in this work are Black hair as power, a presence that insists upon its visibility and sparks transformation. Black hair is a temporal bridge that connects generations and ways of being. Black hair is an ongoing practice of negotiation and care. Each principle is a dimension of Black hair’s liberatory potential. This thesis is both personal and collective, artistic and political, and grounded in care and imagination.
Through an interdisciplinary community art practice of hair sculptures, ink drawings, and intimate gatherings, this thesis explores the materiality and ontological dimensions of Black hair as both source and method. The artworks abstract and magnify Black hair’s texture, creating visual and tactile archives that speak to racialized histories and ongoing struggles for bodily autonomy. However, they also uncover manifestation–naming freedom that is embodied, relational, and shared. This thesis engaged Black communities in DC, particularly Black women, femmes, and gender-expansive individuals, through workshops that create space for reflection, intimacy, and collective making. While grounded in specificity, the reality that everyone has a relationship with hair, in its presence and absence, allows for multiple entry points into the work, inviting all participants into a shared inquiry about belonging, self-definition, and freedom.
Rooted in Black feminist thought and informed by scholars such as Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Melissa Harris-Perry, and bell hooks, this thesis resists narratives of erasure and subjugation. Instead, it affirms the liberatory potential of everyday acts of care. It argues that when we engage with Black hair as a method and mirror, we can potentially reclaim sovereignty, not only over our bodies but over our ways of knowing, relating, and existing. Black hair is not just something we wear; it is something we practice. Through Black hair, we explore how to make freedom not only imaginable but material.
Zine (in progress)
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