Migration Studies (No. 41)

Lisa Garrett
"Migration Studies (No. 41)", 2022
Mixed Media, Kanekalon 26" hair, Yasutomo Metallic Gold Black Ink, acrylic, Kozo Paper
Courtesy the artist.

The most recent works from my ongoing series, Migration Studies, weave hair into paper to examine the role of hair care and beauty routines as protection within Black culture. They both trace and extend our relationships to lost languages and homelands by connecting us to our collective past and future. Working with Black hair as a material has long connected me to my families, but I am more interested in connecting with ancestral knowing through contemporary practices of making. Weaving and braiding allow me to move my hands as many of my ancestors may have, and this contact point provides a type of protection in the present. There is solace in that kind of knowing. These particular drawings are shield-like and they are places of respite. I often think about artmaking as the home-place of liberation, where inventing and reinventing our own survival looks like claiming beauty standards that exist beyond and before dominant narratives. In that context the art object is the transformative mechanism by which our systems of value become visible and knowable.
-Lisa Jarrett