Off Record is a site-specific installation and solo exhibition made for Far Beyond the Walls, curated by Frances Melhop. Melhop describes her collaborative project as, "an immersive series of conceptual exhibitions within the actual cells and cell blocks, medical area, and culinary section of the decommissioned Nevada State prison." When she invited me to participate by mounting a solo exhibit in the former barber's cell I began to imagine what ties to liberation and freedom one might assign to hair on the “inside.”

 

In Off Record I considered the possibilities available to a Black body to re-situate itself across space and time, and I imagined how many dreams and attempts at escape were made (and discussed) in a place like the barber’s chair. It’s worth mentioning that the barber’s cell that hosted my installation was located in the former men’s section of the prison. The women who were incarcerated here were housed in a separate part of the compound, but this area was not available to site work. I could still imagine them over there doing their hair and plotting their freedom and everyone else’s too. How then does Black hair perform on the inside? What hair rituals existed for Black women incarcerated at the Nevada State Prison and how do they echo our collective migratory journeys? What shapes our beauty routines without access to resources for care like the Beauty Supply and salons full of our scents and voices, our mothers and daughters? Beyond this, what knowing do we carry with us and how does it keep us safe when the body’s mobility is hampered but our minds are free? 

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My project is an attempt to chart an imaginary escape route and the primary material is synthetic hair. It is a drawing constructed by weaving hair into the grid of weaving net, playing with line and color as signals for other kinds of cues, pathways, and exits. The cape draped over the chair would have been the garment each person wore, each occupying the other’s space in turn and over time. It is not a labyrinth, intended to be solved. Rather, it is a commentary on the insistence of continuously trying to locate one’s freedom in the face of absolute physical confinement. This work is a monument to those women in recognition of the tenderness and care that most certainly was present in addition to whatever else.

 

Photos by Mario Gallucci. Prison cell photos by Frances Melhop.