Sonya Clark
The Hair Craft Project
For Clark, hairdressing is the “primordial fiber art.” For The Hair Craft Project, Clark visited 11 hairdressers, inviting them to demonstrate their skills in twisting, braiding, and beading on two supports: Clark’s own head, and silk strands on a canvas. Acquired with the support of the Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, this multipart work by an important African American artist documents a vital creative form in contemporary African American culture. The Hair Craft Project was a featured and favorite work in the 2015 exhibition “Crafted: Objects in Flux.”
Sonya Clark
The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya
2013
Eleven inkjet photographs; 1 of 11
These photographs show each stylist’s work in hair, documented through images of the back of the artist’s head. Clark worked in collaboration with Kamala Bhagat, Dionne James Eggleston, Marsha Johnson, Chaundra King, Anita Hill Moses, Nasirah Muhammad, Jameika Pollard, Ingrid Riley, Ife Robinson, Natasha Superville, and Jamilah Williams. Standing next to Clark in each frame, facing the camera, the stylist herself provides a human connection and authorship to a craft that tends to remain anonymous once it transitions out of the salon and into the street.
The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, Frederick Brown Fund, Samuel Putnam Avery Fund, and Helen and Alice Colburn Fund
Sonya Y. S. Clark
2015.2922.1–11
Sonya Clark
The Hair Craft Project: Hairstyles on Canvas
2013
Silk threads, beads, shells, yarn on 11 canvases; 9 of 11
Each hairdresser was able to showcase the extent of her talents in both permanent and ephemeral ways, with Clark’s head serving as a living gallery space and the photographs and braided and beaded silk strands on canvas as works to display.
The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, Frederick Brown Fund, Samuel Putnam Avery Fund, and Helen and Alice Colburn Fund
Sonya Y. S. Clark
2015.2923.1–11