There’s a new art exhibition opening in Phoenix on Saturday — and it’s all about hair. Black hair, to be specific. Naps, Headwraps & Afros features Black artists as well as hairstylists working together across mediums to create a fusion of art, 3D hair installations — and even a live hair show performance.
Claudia June, curator, joined The Show to discuss with artist and hairstylist Hope Chiann.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: I want to start with you June and just talk a little bit about curating this and deciding to make it happen. What's the inspiration behind this exhibition?
CLAUDIA JUNE: Yes. So I have been a curator for about two years now. This will be my second Black art exhibition to this scale. The idea really came from my base community that I've been curating, called For the Kin Folk, and underneath my community, I have always imagined me curating different type of events. So I started with the Black art socials because I wanted to be straightforward with the things that I was trying to provide for the community. I wanted to provide unity. I wanted to provide good vibes and good energy. I’ve always been an artist as well.
And then me being a person who I'm very thematic. So I'm always putting themes on every single thing. I call myself the country creative. So Naps, Headwraps and Afros is just an idea that I had as an ode to everybody who needs to feel this and like to see this is kind of just like putting our experiences in one room for one night for all of us to see.
GILGER: So there's a level of community to this. But you're also doing this interesting commentary on Black hair and what that means, combining it with artists it sounds like.
JUNE: Each exhibition that I plan to do like my first one was titled Give Flowers to the Ones Who Blessed the Whole Place. So I chose artists who had art that catered to that theme. And so for this time, Naps, Headwraps and Afros, I chose 13 artists, 13 Black local artists, most of them are local only person who is not. She's flying down from Wisconsin, which is super exciting. But everybody in this exhibition has a piece that ties into the depiction of their own experience with Black hair.
GILGER: OK. So let's turn to you then, Hope, and talk a little bit about your role in this because you're doing what's called a 3D hair installation.
HOPE CHIANN: Yes, ma'am.
GILGER: What does this look like?
CHIANN: This is going to be a braid, a jumbo braid and there's going to be beads attached to them and I made multiple of them. So there's 11 in total and it's, the braid is about 5 ft long. Yeah. And I don't even know what, maybe seven inches wide and then the beads are, I don't even take the measurements on them. Maybe like six inches huge.
GILGER: Yeah.
CHIANN: So, yeah, you ever see a little Black girl with beads in her hair? That's what I wanted to bring to life. Like how we used to wear hair as kids. I want it to be very nostalgic and just like that's where it all started. We may be having the lace friends, the long braids and everything now, the not less braids, but it started with the beads in our hair and just being loud and cute and colorful. So that's what I want this exhibit to bring to life for this installation rather.
GILGER: An installation. Will it be attached to anyone's head?
CHIANN: No, it will not. It's going to be hanging from the ceiling actually, when you walk in, your eyes will look at the ceiling and be like, wow, this is amazing.
GILGER: But that will have a real cultural meaning to people who come to the music. They'll know what that reference is. Talk a little bit about what hair means to you. You've been doing hair for a long time. It sounds like you went through high school doing an EVIT (East Valley Institution of Technology) program for cosmetology, right? Tell us about that.
CHIANN: Yeah, I've been doing hair for eight years, went to EVIT when I was 16 and 17. But I don't know, my family, they grew up doing hair. My grandpa was a hairstylist. He had his own hair salon and I didn't even really know that until I started doing it. So I think it's just something that has always just been in me.
But I don't know, to me hair is, it's just a way to express yourself, you know, and I feel like right now, yes, I'm expressing myself through hair, but it's bound to change as I continue on as an artist right now, that is my medium is with doing hair. But I think for me what's most important is always just to be able to express. So even if it's not going to be hair in 20 years, it's going to be something else.
But as a Black woman, our hair is so versatile and whatever I can try to do with hair to amplify that versatility, I'm going to do it. So it's like I like to look at things that are just everyday items or whatever and OK, how can this be hair?
GILGER: How can this be hair? What is an editorial hairstyle mean to you?
CHIANN: Just something that's kind of out the box, you know, not the everyday type of look that you would see also very artistic. I think that it should be, when you're doing editorial hairstyle, OK, yes, you know, you're working with hair, you want to kind of fit the person's head. But at the same time, it should be like a direct extension of who you are as an artist and just like pushing that boundary. That's what it is to me pushing the boundaries of what traditional hairstyling looks like.
GINGER: So June, let's talk about how an installation like that fits into the show in general. Who else can we expect to see? what kinds of things can you expect to see?
JUNE: So the first time you walk into this exhibition, you will see that installation would kind of just yell in your face. I really love Hope's installation because like she said, it's the embodiment of us as little girls. And so when you see like a lifesize version of that, it's like boom, like a memory back in phase. So alongside Hope’s floating exhibition, you will see other hair installations but are more like sculptures. And then I have a variety of painters and photographers who will be having big prints.
And also I have an artist who will be bringing physical pieces, which is also another 3D braiding piece where an artist had made dresses out of braids and hair and things like that. So you can see some things like that, some things that will really touch people.
GILGER: So I want to end with that thought, right? Like you're trying to touch people as art does, right? But doing it through hair and Black hair in particular is so interesting because there's such a storied and kind of fraught history to Black hair, especially for Black women, which you kind of mentioned. Is it for you, June about reclaiming, is it about freedom? What does it mean to you?
JUNE: I think that it's about knowing the history and I think that it's about knowing why you should be proud of Black hair. And then even if you're not a Black woman and you want to know more, this is a time for other people to learn about it.
So for me, I know as Black women, we have a lot of different experiences with the connection with our Black hair, but a lot of things stay the same. I grew up in a beauty salon, my mom's best friend, she was my hairdresser for like a long time. And I remember just going through stages of like shaving my head and then I want to relax it. And then I actually hated that the barbershop was across the hallway because the cute boy in my school see me. It's just really about bringing the joy and how like I can imagine in the room, we're talking about things that we've experienced individually, but also things that we can relate on together.
