Bare It All
This sculpture mocks patriarchy’s insatiable thirst for the feminine body, through the exaggeration of spectacle; taunting, provoking, reclaiming. Repurposing the artists’s experience of exploitation through rage, she re-centers the corporeal implications of feminine subjectivity. The body is a site of violence and, as such, an entry point for political activation. Bare It All examines the potentials of performativity, spectacle, and re-membering as tools for black women and femmes to reckon with how we’ve been implicated, policed, lacerated, and dismembered creating a void or chasm of identity. Before ultimately embracing the Wild Woman--an archetype closely considered in Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ masterwork, Women Who Run With Wolves. This is Riley’s enactment of the delicate balance between tender touch and conviction, motherhood and girlhood, braid and crochet hair. Here, the artist weaves together 40in Model Natural Touch Braid #2b & #350, Double Strand Cuban Twist 2b, Outre Crochet X-pression 1b, and a 12in Freetress Braid Beach Curl--all of which are of black cultural significance. “Bare It All” is a continuance and evolution from the work “Face of Consumption” as part of their project titled “Hair Care”.
Artist: Nina Riley
This sculpture mocks patriarchy’s insatiable thirst for the feminine body, through the exaggeration of spectacle; taunting, provoking, reclaiming. Repurposing the artists’s experience of exploitation through rage, she re-centers the corporeal implications of feminine subjectivity. The body is a site of violence and, as such, an entry point for political activation. Bare It All examines the potentials of performativity, spectacle, and re-membering as tools for black women and femmes to reckon with how we’ve been implicated, policed, lacerated, and dismembered creating a void or chasm of identity. Before ultimately embracing the Wild Woman--an archetype closely considered in Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ masterwork, Women Who Run With Wolves. This is Riley’s enactment of the delicate balance between tender touch and conviction, motherhood and girlhood, braid and crochet hair. Here, the artist weaves together 40in Model Natural Touch Braid #2b & #350, Double Strand Cuban Twist 2b, Outre Crochet X-pression 1b, and a 12in Freetress Braid Beach Curl--all of which are of black cultural significance. “Bare It All” is a continuance and evolution from the work “Face of Consumption” as part of their project titled “Hair Care”.
Artist: Nina Riley
This sculpture mocks patriarchy’s insatiable thirst for the feminine body, through the exaggeration of spectacle; taunting, provoking, reclaiming. Repurposing the artists’s experience of exploitation through rage, she re-centers the corporeal implications of feminine subjectivity. The body is a site of violence and, as such, an entry point for political activation. Bare It All examines the potentials of performativity, spectacle, and re-membering as tools for black women and femmes to reckon with how we’ve been implicated, policed, lacerated, and dismembered creating a void or chasm of identity. Before ultimately embracing the Wild Woman--an archetype closely considered in Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ masterwork, Women Who Run With Wolves. This is Riley’s enactment of the delicate balance between tender touch and conviction, motherhood and girlhood, braid and crochet hair. Here, the artist weaves together 40in Model Natural Touch Braid #2b & #350, Double Strand Cuban Twist 2b, Outre Crochet X-pression 1b, and a 12in Freetress Braid Beach Curl--all of which are of black cultural significance. “Bare It All” is a continuance and evolution from the work “Face of Consumption” as part of their project titled “Hair Care”.
Artist: Nina Riley