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Negress
Year
2024
Materials
Artist's personal wig collection, printed pages of Ida B Well's Southern Horrors, accessories found attached to wig, painted wood
The exact number of black women lynched in America remains unknown, due to newspapers referring to them in death as an unnamed "negress." In Negress, the artist merges her understanding of her identity with the lineage of African American women who made it possible for her to express herself the way she is able to now.
The tree's roots are sculpted from paper mache pages of Southern Horror by Ida B. Wells, an African American activist who campaigned for the end of lynching. The tree's foliage is comprised of the artist's personal collection of wigs she has worn since age 13, hung in chronological order to represent her journey of identity and self-expression over time. In order to capture the different moments in the artist's life, the wigs were left unmanipulated in the condition found with different accessories and miscellaneous objects left tangled in them.
Negress honors the forgotten identities of lynching victims by rooting the artist's story and identity in their legacy and recognizes that today's freedom and progress for African American women is built upon the tribulations of generations past.
