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Provided by Taubman Museum of Art
Sonya Clark (American, Born 1967), The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya, 2013, Eleven inkjet photographs, Eleven color photographs: Each 28” x 28”, The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, Frederick Brown Fund, Samuel Putnam Avery Fund, and Helen and Alice Colburn Fund Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Provided by Taubman Museum of Art
Sonya Clark (American, Born 1967), The Hair Craft Project: Hairstyles on Canvas, 2013, Silk threads, beads, shells, and yarn on eleven canvases, Nine at 29” x 29”, Two at 33” x 33”, The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, Frederick Brown Fund, Samuel Putnam Avery Fund, and Helen and Alice Colburn Fund Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Provided by Taubman Museum of Art
Sonya Clark (American, Born 1967), Pluck and Grow (detail), 2015 – present, Dyed paper, 6’ x 4’, Courtesy of Sonya Clark
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Provided by Taubman Museum of Art
Sonya Clark (American, Born 1967), Writer Type (detail), 2016, Found typewriter and artist’s hair, 7” x 10”x 11”, Courtesy of Sonya Clark
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Provided by Taubman Museum of Art
Sonya Clark (American, Born 1967), Writer Type (detail), 2016, Found typewriter and artist’s hair, 7” x 10”x 11”, Courtesy of Sonya Clark
We always encourage locals and visitors to take a peek inside the Taubman Museum of Art for a dose of fantastic culture and colors. We're excited to see this new exhibit coming soon from Richmond resident (and VCU educator) Sonya Clark. Read our interview with her on her inspirations, advice to aspiring artists, and how she continues to find art everywhere she looks. More information on her exhibit is after the interview, courtesy of the Taubman.
LL: Explain the exhibit in your own words?
SC: I have a solo show up at the 2nd Street Gallery in Charlottesville, and then this second show at the Taubman. I wanted to divide the shows – one to do with hair, something I've been working with as a subject and a medium for a little over 20 years – and the other show, “Bittersweet and Tender” is dealing with embedded history in American culture around racial disparity and economics and people as commodity.
This show at the Taubman, there's no neutrality around there. People are saying "I have a bad hair day, or good hair," or a particular hairstyle is not appropriate for that person or age (or is appropriate for that job, etc). It's a place in which we as human beings are negotiating who and how we are, and how we present ourselves. In that sense it becomes a kind of language. The language of American culture, politics and history, African-American hair has a lot that is said about it and has a lot to say.
LL: What was it that inspired you to use these materials for this exhibit?
SC: I've been using hair as a subject for 20 years, so there are pieces in the show that are not brand-new. I say that hairdressers are my heroes; a little on how that came about:
Think about what a hairdresser is doing. They're artists who are doing commissioned work on our heads. So we're walking around with their artwork all the time! They are perhaps the best known in many sense and the most anonymous group of artists. African-American hairdressers, specifically the women I worked with for the hair craft project (one of the pieces that's in the show here) had this rich tradition of knowing how to work with every kind of hair in every possibly way. It's an interesting thing as a black woman walking into a salon that works with hair grown by European-American people (what will we do there?) and as a straight-haired person walks into a black salon, there might be some cultural things that are happening there. It's not about them not being able to do their hair. There's this way which even the salon becomes a place to talk about the ability of African-American culture to become multilingual. Hair is a language; African-American people can speak straight-haired, curly-haired language, and so there's strength in that, as well as history.
You have to know yourself. You have to be multilingual. Hairdressers are my heroes because they're multilingual. There's a way in which hairdressers are like therapists because someone might be going through an issue like not feeling good about themselves and hairdressers can flip that. They're my heroes because in African-American community, this is one of the ways people can actually make a living whether or not they have experienced the right to have a great education (which we know is huge racial disparity around that). You might find an incredible hairdresser who never went to school or got a Ph.D but can make an incredible living. It's an old, rich tradition and truly a language.
In West Africa, hairstyles that I studied are actually indicative of specific things. Culturally, about who has certain bodies of knowledge, around gender, around class, all of those things. You can study the hair of a culture and know a lot about it. What is a valuable body, what is not valuable? We're still negotiating those things.
LL: What do you hope museum visitors experience from their visit and viewings?
SC: I try not to think about what I hope my audience is getting out of it. I have some intentionality, but I hope it connects with people in multiple ways. Here's one of the things about hair – it brings us together, our DNA is in our hair; we spend a fair amount of time primping ourselves. Hair becomes one of those things we can look racially past ourselves. It's a way in which we're all connected to our ancestors; hair brings us together and it separates us.
There's a piece in the story “Pluck and Grow” that's interactive. Pluck and Grow – I've asked people to write down metaphors about their hair. Those get dyed and twisted and placed in a wall – from a distance, it looks like an enlarged scalp. The audience is asked to pluck a hair and unravel it and read it. You might find one you can read or not, but you connect with whoever left that story. I'm also asking them to write their own stories; ss more people interact with it, the pieces that are replaced that aren't dyed, looks like graying hair.
I hope it becomes enriched by those who participate. Other people might be truly affected because they find it troublesome or provocative or familiar; there's some sort of symbiosis; sympathy or empathy. I can't control those things but I hope they happen.
LL: What inspires you in general, when you have artists' block, etc?
SC: I rarely have artists' block because I have more ideas than I can make! Thanks to my job as an educator, I am surrounded by artists who are creative, compelling people all the time. There's a wonderful flow of ideas; I'm also grateful to my friends who are non-artists; they know what I'm interested in (there's not a single hair-related article I haven't seen from the community helping me with their efforts for my work). I'm very blessed that way. Sometimes the more difficult thing as an artist is wondering which piece to make? And I do have to say that sometimes what's happening in current day culture can have an impact.
Ideas always happen when I'm taking a shower which is inconvenient because I don't have a pen! When you're unplugged from technology and just being. I do think water has a way of encouraging inspiration. Another place is when I'm having a window seat on the plane and looking at the clouds. When I'm unplugged and looking down at the earth. A lot of ideas come then, too. I just have to keep the pen and paper handy.
LL: What advice do you have for aspiring artists?
SC: I'm an educator so I think about this all the time. It's our responsibility to find out authentic obsession. It's our responsibility to nourish and explore that authentic obsession. You heard me talking about my community helps me explore; they help me feed it and nourish it.
You have to nourish it, explore it, and never let it go. The thing about being an artist is that someone will tell you that's not art. You can't make art about hair. You shouldn't make art using that material, if you're really an artist, you should be painting, etc. You really find the thing that is truly interesting to to you, you'll never be bored at it. The important thing is to never be dissuaded from your obsession, which is not an easy thing to do. Everything will get in the way of your artwork; you have to stay committed to it. Even art will get in the way of your work. The time you spend as an artist, putting images together to send somewhere. They're all important things that have to do with being an artists, but you have to be in the studio and let things come. You have to be really attentive to that obsession and vocalize it so other people know and can help you.
LL: How do you love to spend your time outside of your artwork?
SC: I take my sleep very seriously! If my day goes perfectly, then I wake up every morning, I eat a meal, spend time with my husband of many years, meditate, do yoga, practice some Spanish, head off to work and spend time with other artists.
Outside of the work of being an artist, one thing I love to do is cook. I consider it another art form. I also love to travel; if I'm in the US for longer than an 18 month stretch, I get anxious. I need to be in another country pretty often for another perspective (especially for first-generation American). It's easier for me to see who I am and who we are as a nation when I have a little bit of perspective. It feeds the work as it relates to identity and culture, and it also a way in which I get to meet multiple people and perspectives and see how they in fact see the world. That's a beautiful thing and really important to me. South Africa is my next trip coming up in November and I just got back from France.
MORE ON SONYA CLARK'S UPCOMING EXHIBIT:
ROANOKE, Va. (Aug. 15, 2016) – The Taubman Museum of Art is pleased to present Follicular: The Hair Stories of Sonya Clark, a major mid-career exhibition featuring the work of African-American multimedia artist Sonya Clark, Oct. 1, 2016-May 14, 2017. The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to see the intricate history of African American hair presented through objects and performances.
Throughout her career, Clark’s work has often featured hair and combs in the place of more traditional fibers and art-making materials. She uses them to speak meaningfully about cultural heritage, gender, beauty standards, race and identity. “Hairdressers are my heroes,” said Clark. “The poetry and politics of Black hair care specialists are central to my work. Rooted in a rich legacy, their hands embody an ability to map a head with a comb and manipulate the fiber we grow into complex form.”
Clark will discuss her work during an artist talk Friday, Oct. 7, at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum. The talk is free for Taubman Museum of Art Presents Follicular: The Hair Stories of Sonya Clark
Clark also will team with Kamala Bhagat, a well-respected African American hair stylist from Richmond, for the performance, “Translations,” in which they will reinterpret an historic African hairstyle on Clark’s head before a live audience, bringing historic African adornment traditions to current day. The performance is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 8, from 1-3 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
“Through Clark’s new works and performances created for the Museum, her exhibition will explore hair as an indicator of race, social status, a symbol of age and authority, an object of beauty, and adornment,” noted Amy Moorefield, deputy director of exhibitions and collections, who curated the exhibition.
Clark holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Amherst College. Since 2006, Clark has been chair of the Craft/Material Studies Department in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. Clark's work has been exhibited in more than 300 museums and galleries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and throughout the Americas. Her work is in the collection of many museums including the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Memphis Brooks Museum. Clark has received several awards including a United States Artists Fellowship,the Pollock-Krasner Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Residency in Italy, a Red Gate Residency in China, an 1858 Award for Contemporary Southern Art from the Gibbes Museum, the 2014 ArtPrize and the Juried Grand Prize co-winner, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Follicular: The Hair Stories of Sonya Clark will be on view in the Museum’s Contemporary Gallery. Exhibition and education support has been provided in part by the City of Roanoke through its Arts Commission.