The Liberation of Hair in Hannah Traore Gallery’s Group Exhibition “Don’t Touch My Hair”
The exhibition is on view from June 6 to July 27 at 150 Orchard St.
J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Onile Gogoro Or Akaba (1975). Photo by Evan McKnight, courtesy of Hannah Traore Gallery.
In Black, Indigenous, and Asian communities, hair plays an epochal role in identity, history, and empowerment. For gallerist Hannah Traore, in addition to being Black and Jewish, suffering from hypothyroidism and facing hair loss has significantly changed her relationship with hair.
From June 6 to July 27, Traore will display the self-curated 2022 Artsy collection-inspired group exhibition, Don’t Touch My Hair, at Hannah Traore Gallery at 150 Orchard St. The well-versed gallerist tapped 18 artists who intimately share similar hair sentiments through cultures and experiences. Whether it’s physical body or head hair, hair tools, or a representation of hair, Don’t Touch My Hair embodies how these artists feel liberated, oppressed, humanized, and dehumanized through their relationships with hair.
The artists in Don’t Touch Hair are Andy Jackson, Anya Paintsil, Baseera Khan, Brianna Lance, Camila Falquez, Felandus Thames, Hiba Schahbaz, Hong Chun Zhang, Jayoung Yoon, Jazmine Hayes, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Kezia Harrell, Laetitia Adam-Rabel, Marcel Marien, Murjoni Merriweather, Ma Yanhong, Sheena Liam, Wangechi Mutu, and Zizipho Poswa.
Traore views everything from an art lens. With hair, she thinks about the Black Panthers repping an afro to dismantle Eurocentric standards. During the Holocaust, she ponders how the Nazis shaved Jewish people’s hair. During slavery, enslaved people would braid their hair in the shape of maps to escape. In recent times, people have shaved their hair to express sorrow and sacrifice in solidarity with the People of Palestine.
Top: Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait as Grand Odalisque (After Ingres) (2018). Bottom: Hong Chun Zhang, Grind #2. Photos by Evan McKnight, courtesy of Hannah Traore Gallery.
Inspired by her former Skidmore professor and advisor, Penny Jolly, and Traore’s assistant, Destiny Gray, the research process for Don’t Touch My Hair was intentional and close to the heart. Traore refers to Jolly’s extensive knowledge of hair in Renaissance art, which conditioned her eye to view hair in amplified, individualized ways. With Gray, Traore conducted studio visits and co-worked meticulous research physically and online to display the infinite looks, emotions, and significance behind hair. As she delved into the groundwork, Traore reminisced on how profound hair was to her. When she first shaved her armpit hair, she had trouble parting from it, so she put it in a Ziplock bag and kept it.
“Hair has been at the top of my mind for my whole life, but for the past seven, eight years, I started slowly losing my hair,” Traore says. “It started getting straighter and straighter. I learned about my thyroid condition five or six years ago. Now I take pills, and my hair has grown back a little bit, but it's still straighter than it used to be. I used to have ringlets when I was okay when I was younger.”
Despite her embracing her identity as a Black woman, Traore says she often feels insecure because many people cannot distinguish her Blackness. They mistake her for different races and ethnicities from every continent. However, when she wears her hair in braids, Traore says people can recognize that she’s Black.
Although Traore grew up in the diverse city of Toronto, she attended an all-girls, non-diverse school. She would straighten her hair to fit in with her classmates. Her father often brought his side of the family, who lived with them for most of Traore’s life, from which her diverse experience stemmed.
Top: Jazmine Hayes, Code 4 (2022). Bottom: Sheena Liam, Solidarity (2021). Photos by Evan McKnight, courtesy of Hannah Traore Gallery.
“My mom knew she had a mixed daughter,” Traore says. “She always tried to tell me how special I was for being mixed. Looking back, it didn’t feel colorist. It felt like, ‘Fuck, I have a daughter who’s Black, let’s make sure that she’s confident.’
One artist in Don’t Touch My Hair that resonated with Traore is Paintsil, who often creates tapestries of Black people with her own hair. Her work personifies a similar narrative to Traore’s, except Paintsil depicts how she was othered for having tight-coiled hair in contrast to Traore’s loose-curled hair texture. Traore also recalls Schiele’s ability to capture a woman’s anatomy and hair.
Don’t Touch My Hair is titled after Solange’s 2016 hit, in which Traore notes the song as a culture shifter in the Black community, serving as a message against microaggressions. Despite the hair journey being most prominent in the Black community, Traore knows hair is vital to everyone in every culture, race, and heritage.
As Traore’s hair continues to grow back, so do the implications. She’s made a pact not to take hair for granted and being able to curate Don’t Touch My Hair has encouraged herself and others to treasure it. If Traore can’t uphold the cultural and emotional significance of hair alone, she says she knows these 18 artists can.
