This photograph was taken as a part of an artwork challenge known as the Salooni that I created with three different Ugandan girls: Kampire Bahana, Aida Holly-Nambi and Gloria Wavamunno.
The Salooni explores the concept of Black hair practices as programs of information via which tradition and survivalist methods are handed from era to era.
We arrange a roving hair salon that gave out free hairstyles and made house for Black girls to convene, converse and join over all the great and tough issues about Black hair. These installations occurred throughout the LaBa! avenue artwork competition in Kampala, Uganda; the Africa Utopia competition on the Southbank Centre in London; the N’Golá Biennal of arts and tradition in Sao Tomé; and the Africa Bass tradition competition in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The salon was set with three chairs going through mirrors; we hung up portraits we’d taken and performed movies we’d shot, together with reference pictures from our analysis. One chair was devoted to the stylist who did free hairstyles; one chair allowed guests to model one another’s hair; the final chair held a “share ebook” the place folks might write all of the issues they want they’d by no means discovered about their hair. These have been later shared in a TEDx Speak that Aida and I gave.
The shoot for this specific sequence, Magic within the Backyard, was very particular as a result of we gathered at a good friend’s home in Buziga neighbourhood in Kampala, and all the help was supplied by associates who’re within the pictures. The photograph – and this complete challenge – remind me that my tribe will present up for me, we’ll present up for one another. It jogs my memory why I make work for us.
There’s a proverb that knowledgeable this challenge: “When your sister does your hair, you don’t want a mirror.” This picture makes me consider my household of Black girls, organic and never: a lot of the Salooni challenge was made for this group and to be surrounded by them throughout its creation is a part of the rationale this challenge is so particular to me.