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The Galleries at Moore
Pat Ward Williams Virtual Tour: Oh, She Got a Head Fulla Hair 1985 hand-colored silver prints, wood mantle, text on paper strips, 72" x 72" |
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Text from A Narrative Chronology by Moira Roth Italicized text by Pat Ward Williams |
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The inspiration for this piece came from my reading a short story by Ntozake Shange. In the story, a black woman becomes obsessed with her hair, believing that everything she has ever wanted will come to her if only her hair grows longer. The work at first seems to be about black women’s hair, which can be straight, curly; kinky; fuzzy; nappy; and
a variety of other textures. Hair texture has historically been a symbol and sometimes a determinator of social class for black women.
Transforming fuzzy locks into feminine grace is a very common obsession among black women. I wanted the photographs to reflect that obsession, so I layered the images in the camera. These photographs are displayed on an altar/mantelpiece with the story written on hanging paper strips. Each strip of paper has a passage that is provocative but does not contain the whole story: The audience is encouraged to read the strips, but there are more than a hundred strips to read. The compulsion to read the whole story becomes an obsession, like black women’s obsession with their hair. The viewer feels this obsession, and it becomes the true subject of the work. By creating this altemative display for my photographs, I was creating a one-to-one relationship between my art and the viewer. I had found through my presentation of the photographs a way to break away from the photo frame [1989/1991]. |