Lisa 
Jarrett 

EXHIBITION WALL TEXT

 

In Tenderhead, Lisa Jarrett weaves together her interest in migration and tracing lost familial  histories to Beauty Supply stores and salons—critical intersections of Black life. The artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Oregon features new works and site-responsive installations that activate the abundant patterns, colors, images and textures found at the Beauty Supply. She says that, “The Beauty Supply is my art supply store.” It is a site where she accesses physical materials as well as the less tangible memories activated by these materials so important to her work.

 

Jarrett suggests that the Beauty Supply, salon, and kitchen sink are places undeniably linked to migration and diaspora as surrogate homelands. The geographic locations, aesthetics, layout, products, customers, and economies of the Beauty Supply locate it firmly in this “in-between” place, setting it apart as a complicated site of joy,nostalgia, desire, and unmet need. Jarrett investigates how these relatively mundane places and objects function as dynamic living archives in Black communities and families that accompany us from generation to generation. Places like the Beauty Supply (as well as the people, objects, ideas, and experiences contained therein) are the foundation of the work in this exhibition. Tenderhead refers to a question that she (and many others) vividly remember being asked while getting their hair done as children: “Are you tenderheaded?”
Jarrett says, “It’s a loaded question,” and this exhibition offers windows
into her reply.

 

Lisa Jarrett: Tenderhead is curated by Sara Krajewski, Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Jaleesa Johnston, Curatorial Coordinator. This exhibition is made possible through generous grants from the 1803 Fund and Meyer Memorial Trust, with additional support from the Endowment for Black Art and Experiences and the Art Gym Endowment. 

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Photo credits: Mario Gallucci