From the Screen to the Gallery: Hannah Traore Brings "Don't Touch My Hair" to Life

July 16, 2024

When gallerist Hannah Traore was approached to put together a curated collection for Artsy, the world’s leading online art marketplace, her eponymous downtown gallery had been open for less than a year. Working with Jordan Huelskamp, Artsy's head of curatorial, Traore developed a guest-curated page for the platform in 2022, centered around the theme of hair. Dealing with her own hair loss due to a battle with hyperthyroidism, Traore was intimately familiar with the role that her hair played in her identity and self-image; what she didn't anticipate was the sheer ubiquity of people that also had stories relating to emotional struggles with their hair, and found a connection to the artworks she had curated. After the launch of that page, Traore and her gallery manager Destiny Gray diligently researched and worked to bring that page to life in her gallery, opening the show Don't Touch My Hair in June. The show's digital roots are rather unprecedented: according to Huelskamp, this is the first time an exhibition has been actualized from an Artsy guest-curated collection in this way.

By Brook Aster
Images courtesy of artists and Hannah Traore Gallery
Cover image of "Untitled (Onile Gogoro Or Akaba)" by J.D. Okhai Ojeikere

As Traore wrote, "...this show celebrates hair as a symbol of beauty, power and identity. That being said, the importance of hair is not exclusive to the Black community." Featuring artists like Camila Falquez, Hiba Schahbaz, Anya Paintsil, and Wangechi Mutu, the exhibition is a wide-ranging and diverse study of the personal, emotional, and cultural significance of hair across the human experience.

Traore and Huelskamp joined office to discuss the show, the role of digital engagement in the art world, and the curatorial page that started it all.

Brook Aster— Thank you both so much for making the time for this conversation. Jordan, I would love to hear about the first time that you encountered Hannah and her work.

Jordan Huelskamp— Hannah and I met through a mutual dear friend. My role as head of curatorial at Artsy is not only helping guide and curate experiences for people on Artsy —through personalization algorithms and curated moments for our audience —it’s also about tapping other tastemakers whose opinions and perspectives matter.

We launched this guest curation project in 2022, coming out of a time in which we were trying to engage our audience in interesting, digital-first ways. The art world was embracing these projects with a lot of gusto because we were in lockdown.

Hannah already has such a strong curatorial thesis for her gallery, and she was just the perfect person for this. It was so fun to work on this together.

Hannah, where were you in your career and in your life at the time that you were approached by Jordan to work together? And how did you come to a decision on the theme?

Hannah Traore— I was really excited about it because obviously Artsy is such an important platform. Before opening the gallery, it was a huge resource for me for research galleries and artists. It was such an honor to be on the platform in the first place, especially as such a new gallery.

I was just really excited and really honored that Jordan thought of me to do a project. I really thought long and hard about what I wanted the theme to be and ended up being really excited about the topic of hair. And if I'm not mistaken, Jordan, I think I'd actually given you three ideas and you liked hair the most.

JH— Yeah, that sounds right.

HT— I spent even more time than I thought I was going to, just because I got so excited and into it. Once you have issues with your hair — whether it’s aging, or a thyroid issue, or identity, or whatever it may be — you realize that everybody else also has these issues. Every time I would bring it up, it was like someone in the vicinity had a story or a personal connection.

Also, so many artists work with hair, but in such diverse and interesting ways. Some depict hair, some use hair as material, some use hair products or accessories, and then some use hair in ways that are so creative, I never could have thought it up myself.

When I first picked the idea, I hadn’t realized how broad the topic was in a really exciting and fun way. So I just got so into it, and then wrote a very personal essay about it as well. I was so proud of the outcome that I thought, “one day this has to become an actual physical exhibition."

JH— Hair is such a potent symbol as a curatorial theme. It is one of those elemental, human artistic motifs that we all use. Not very many people in the world consider themselves a true professional working artist, but I think everybody engages in art-making with their own body; be it their hair, how they choose to groom themselves, or body modification in general. We all are making these artistic and creative choices about how we want to show up in the world. And everybody has that experience at some point in their lives with hair.

HT— In the essay, I talk about the title “Don't Touch My Hair” and how the song of the same title is such an important anthem in Black Culture. As I did more research and also just talked to more people, I realized every single culture has some kind of spiritual, traditional, emotional, or political significance attached to hair. Individually, every single person has had an experience with their hair. Cutting your hair, shaving your arm pit…. It's all a choice, right? Even choosing to not do anything with your hair or to not shave your legs is a choice.

These decisions are decisions that we all make, whether they're subconscious or intentional. Hair really does absolutely bind us together.

Hanging on by A Hair, by Laetitia Adam-Rabel

Did you approach artists that were not a part of the original curator page for the exhibition?

HT— Yeah, quite a few actually. My gallery manager, Destiny Gray, who I couldn’t have done the show without, and I did a ton of research on artists. I also reached out to almost every single gallery on Artsy to see if they would be interested in consigning their work from the collection. Quite a few galleries did actually, which was really kind of them.

I would say maybe half the artists weren’t in the Artsy collection. It was an aesthetic choice, but it was also based on diversity of materials, diversity of cultures, and diversity of engagement with the topic. I was lucky that there were actually just so many options. And since opening the show we’ve found so many other artists that could have been included. There wouldn't have been space [to add more works], but we thought, “maybe we need to do a part two in a couple of years."

JH— It’s recurring; with these new experiences and some of the experiences that you shared, you will probably find more experiences to relate to, and then you'll discover more artists that speak to that, and then hopefully bring them into a future show. I hope we get another one of these.

Hannah, your gallery opened after the onset of the pandemic, in this era where people are so often encountering things online that they are then going to do later in person. How are you thinking about digital engagement in the art world? How does that inform the decisions that you're making as far as curating an online space?

HT— To me, the great thing about online platforms is that they have made art much more accessible. Obviously not everyone can come to see a show in person. But also, not everyone feels comfortable going to a gallery. One of the reasons why I opened a gallery is to try to make it as comfortable for everyone, especially people who look like me, but the reality is, for a lot of spaces, people don't feel comfortable going inside. It's very opaque, it feels like it's for a certain type of person. Having a platform like Artsy is super important for many reasons, and that is a huge one of them. I don’t fear digital life taking over because there's absolutely no way that the feeling of experiencing art in person could ever be replicated online. It's not a replacement and I don't think it ever will be, but it is an amazing way to reach a larger and more diverse audience.

JH— Yeah, an interesting thing about the art world is that most people do not encounter physical art galleries often, because they are not living in a city where that's normal. I grew up in Fresno, California. We had no art galleries, barely had a museum. It wasn’t until college that I really started to encounter the art world as the massive industry I recognize it as today.

Artsy can be that connector for people who don't have easy access to galleries in their city or in their neighborhood. When you look at the median distance of an Artsy purchase, there are thousands of miles between buyer and seller. Often, they're in different countries, so we are facilitating sales that probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Before Artsy, before the art world was online, you had hyper-local, regional gallery programs in markets that were strong, and you might only discover new programs and galleries if you went to an art fair — if you're lucky enough to be able to do that.

We are nothing without our gallery partners. We are in a symbiotic relationship. Everything we do is in the service of driving more interest from global collectors to our gallery partners.

Jordan, have you had a chance to see the show? I’m curious how this stands out from other projects you’ve worked on. Is this the first time a show has taken shape in real life that started as a guest-curated page?

JH— Well, I won't take any responsibility for the curation of the original page. That was all Hannah. My role there was just as a collaborator, to help bring this to life on Artsy, and to make sure as many people as possible saw it from our user base and to blast it as wide as we could.

I have had a chance to see it in person, and, I mean, the show is absolutely fantastic. When you see works that you've only seen online, there is this element of surprise, always. The scale can surprise you, the materiality can surprise you, the texture — the way things show up in person are just different from the way they show up online. And it was one of those full circle moments. I've engaged with the art world primarily from a digital-first perspective for my entire career, so whenever we're able to bring things into physical spaces, those are the projects that are beyond exciting.

At Artsy, we think really hard about how we can make people become a first time art collector. One of the things that we see over and over again in our conversations with new collectors is that oftentimes at the beginning, they don't really know where to start. They don't trust their own taste and perspectives. But what everybody can do is relate to a person or an experience, or trust a taste maker who they think is amazing. So that's why I think it's so important to bring in as many people like Hannah as we can to share their personal experiences through art and inspire others. I've never had a guest curated collection like this then turn into something physical. So yes, this is the first time something like that has happened.

HT— I also do want to give you more credit than you're giving yourself, because the show wouldn't have happened without you. And the way I remember it is that there were three options, and you were excited about the hair option. So, thank you for that.

JH— Of course. This was special. I love any time we can really curate from the heart.

Don't Touch My Hair will be on view at Hannah Traore Gallery until July 27, 2024.

<em>HAIR TEST (Abdou, 2021) </em> by Andy Jackson — *HAIR TEST (Abdou, 2021)* by Andy Jackson

<em>Rhythm and Blues </em> by Felandus Thames — *Rhythm and Blues* by Felandus Thames

<em>Grind #2</em> by Hong Chun Zhang — *Grind #2* by Hong Chun Zhang

<em>The Renaissance </em> by Marcel Marien — *The Renaissance* by Marcel Marien

Art

Jeanine Brito Paints The Grumpy Girls With Desire, Gore, And Frowns

How is The Grumpy Girls a departure from your previous shows?

My last show was really a linear narrative and The Grumpy Girls is a bit more of an abstract narration. There’s not a clear beginning or a conclusion to the story. It’s giving you the different pieces and you can arrange it in whatever way speaks to you.

It’s a bit of a technical challenge for me. I had never worked with multiple figures this way before, especially in the large works. I would say it’s an evolution [of my previous shows] I’ve been working conceptually with the same ideas… motherhood, sacrifice; this before and after of motherhood.

It seemed very crucial for the girls to be grumpy. Why is it important for the grumpiness?

It takes this very serious idea and winks at you a little bit. I like this idea that they’re doing this labor, they’re braiding this hair or preparing the scenes, but they’re not thrilled about it. There’s reticence, they’re begrudgingly doing this work in service of the play, the film, however you see it.

Having them openly frowning is important for that to convey their unwilling participation. And also frowns are very fun to paint. It’s fun to paint these frown lines. More traditionally in representation of women in painting, we don’t really see a lot of anguished, frowning faces — that’s more rare.

What was the creative process?

It started with a sketch that I made in the summer. The sketch became the artist, the winged figure and she was initially facing the viewer and looking very stern, very grumpy. And I like this defiant gaze. I kept developing that sketch and started building out these other iterations of that character, so the girl and the mother. And at some point, I realized they all had to come together. That’s when this fourth figure emerged, this nude self that they’re all sort of working in service of and the rest of the show was about paintings that would support the storytelling of these four works.

There’s a lot of technicolor theater and costuming references. How did you choose those cross-references to come across in your work?

I really like that era of cinema. The Red Shoes is something I referenced in my last show as well and I continue to go back to. It’s such an interesting story and thematically it really aligns with this show in that it’s really about whether art making and a full life can be compatible, which is the question that I’m asking with this mother figure who's disrupting the braiding scene with the scissors. What are the elements I need to let go of to make space for this new identity? What things need to be sacrificed to be a mother? And what of those things need to be sacrificed to be an artist?

What conversation are you having with yourself through the paintings? Like presenting yourself as a visual artist and pulling back the curtain… what’s going on internally with that?

There’s a degree of vulnerability. But there’s still the veneer of guarding myself, I suppose. The nude figure is most representative of that — laying there like a beach siren nude, but she still has the [opera] gloves and is still wearing the makeup. It’s sort of me saying I allow myself to be vulnerable to a point in my work. And I think that’s where the camp, winking, tongue and cheek element plays in too, because I’m taking these very serious, heavy ideas — it’s adding something acidic to something very fatty.

Especially with these three archetypes, trying to interrogate different aspects of myself. The blood letting one especially is me unpacking my vanity and my relationship to beauty culture and beauty rituals. I’ve seen so many videos lately about simplifying your skincare routine and I used to be a 12-step [skincare] girlie and I honestly don’t know if it was helping. Historically, when you look at these really dangerous beauty practices like lead face paint, those women never knew they were hurting themselves at the time. While the other archetypes are a bit more reflective, the mother is hypothetical — I’m imagining a future version of myself.

<em>In Keeping With Tradition (The Girl)</em>, 2024 — *In Keeping With Tradition (The Girl)*, 2024

<em>After Spring Comes Summer</em>, 2024 — *After Spring Comes Summer*, 2024

<em>You Remember Too Much</em>, 2024 — *You Remember Too Much*, 2024

<em>Libretto for the Grumpy Girls</em>, 2024 — *Libretto for the Grumpy Girls*, 2024

It’s definitely portrayed that there’s this cost to girlhood or womanhood. What was it like to portray that cost?

That’s a perpetual tension in my work. The desire to paint a beautiful figure, but to also represent myself in a way that feels honest to me and navigating beauty ideals in painting and media more broadly. Having pubic hair in a painting, I heard from other artists that they were discouraged to have women’s body hair in paintings and then at the same time, my figures don’t have armpit hair or leg hair. I’m battling my own internalized ideas about beauty standards. As I make more work where I push myself to resist [beauty] ideals more, I notice I become more comfortable in my own body in my real life.

How has your previous experience in fashion contributed? I noticed the opera gloves in the pieces…

Costuming is very important to me. It’s very fun to paint dramatic folds and poofy skirts. The costuming can tell so much of the story for you too. The artist is the most free version of myself so she has these wings and this tiny little tutu that’s a contemporary version of a tutu and it shows her legs and her butt.

The gloves have been a barrier layer, there’s sensuality to the [opera] gloves, but actually whatever is being touched by the hand in the glove is not being touched by the hand itself. I like the sensuality of that restriction. I like to have these feminine elements in contrast to blood and meat, these more grotesque images.

What made you think Oh, I’m going to have this ballerina paint this meat carcass? What was the symbolism behind the carcass? Is it a meditation on femininity?

She’s painting a set piece. So the idea is maybe there’s a slaughterhouse scene that we’re not seeing. But also it’s a nod to my previous work where I’ve painted a lot of meat. She is the archetype that I identify with most at this moment. I like having her in this meta… her painting meat while I’m currently painting [her]. Meat in my work is a symbol for the body. Meat being decontextualized from a consumption context makes it feel a lot more fleshy. This metaphor of earthly flesh, decay, there’s an ephemerality to it — it’s fresh right now [the meat] but it won’t always be.

It’s pulling back the curtain while also showing the stage. How did you manage to capture both?

That’s the duality of these feminine touches and having them directly alongside bodily horror imagery. That it’s staged suggests there’s an artifice here. The surfaces are really smooth and they’re varnished with this fat and finish that gives them this weird quality that’s almost like you’re seeing it through a screen or a piece of glass. It’s a performance — an image that’s not totally solidified. There’s a degree of removal.

Out of all the things you could paint… what’s so interesting about self-portraiture to you?

During Covid, I was stuck at home and this is what I had to work with. It was also a way to project myself into fantasy settings and scenarios that weren’t accessible to me at the time because we were locked down. That’s the origin and now it’s really about trying to know myself, to be corny. I discovered so much about my wants and desires in making these paintings. The things that I’m unpacking or saying at the outset of a body of work develop and surprise me by the time I finish it.

It’s fun to paint these frown lines.

<em>Some Vivid Dream (The Artist)</em>, 2024 — *Some Vivid Dream (The Artist)*, 2024

Art

White Girl Wasted

Urban Dictionary defines “White Girl Wasted” as “the phenomenon which occurs when a person consumes too much alcohol and proceeds to embarrass themselves and their friends for however long they remain conscious.” You know it when you see it: the dancing, yelling, singing, fighting, crying. It’s a tale as old as time — or at least as old as tabloids and celebrity gossip blogs. Celebrity scandals are cash cows for mainstream media outlets, capitalizing off the ugliest moments in an otherwise carefully architected Hollywood landscape. Ultimately, the media needs young starlets committing acts of self-destruction for their own publicity and revenue. Simultaneously, the star benefits from the attention too.

In Cara Benedetto’s solo exhibition WGW at Rose Easton Gallery in London, she explores the construction of white femininity and victimhood, critiquing what society thinks women in power should look like. Instead of portraying Elizabeth I herself, Benedetto depicts a polished Margot Robbie side by side with herself as the character, with the caption “OMG TINA!!!” Similarly displayed is Kristen Stewart, doubled as the late Princess Diana with her signature closed mouth smile and baby doe eyes. The facial features of Stewart reveals a yearning, one that mirrored Diana’s throughout her time as the Princess of Wales, signaling someone to save her from the circumstances and her own personal self-inflicted hell. Through her depiction of chastised historical figures and the celebrity actresses that portrayed them, Benedetto illustrates even the most privileged woman can’t help but self-destruct — but when they do, their appearances afford them a level of grace denied to most. They are vindicated by the spectacle of their spiral, because we choose to be front row viewers of the trainwrecks we can’t look away from.

<em>Hill and Lizzy @Kegger</em>, 2024 — *Hill and Lizzy @Kegger*, 2024

<em>Barbie Does Tina</em>, 2024 — *Barbie Does Tina*, 2024

In a PowerPoint video titled Hill and Lizzy @ Kegger, Hillary Clinton asks Queen Elizabeth if ‘she’s seen her bong?’ Benedetto at first, seems to be making a more tongue-in-cheek pass at the two. She subtly critiques the brashness of the subjects, yet treads towards a more nonchalant response satirizing a neo-feminist or “girl boss” take. Perhaps in 2016, at the peak of Women’s Marches and Trump protests, Benedetto would have had an explicitly critical response to these women in power through a more preachy form of captioning and symbolism. However, the paintings are indicative of changing socio-political stances and a feminist rejection of a monotonous political climate.

Benedetto neatly intertwines both an unattached and critical worldview within her work, presenting these truths for what they really are without feeling moralizing or singling out viewers. Instead she displays the indexicality of the current time period through witty details and symptoms of a generation coping with perpetual and deliberate melancholy. Labeled the Fleabag Effect, the last decade has seen a gradual shift among millennials and Gen z adopting a more dissociative attitude towards their own suffering and romanticizing self destruction as a form of coping with both external and internal triggers. It’s no coincidence that books such as Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Didion’s Play it as it Lays have dominated the literary spotlight amongst Gen Z readers. Both characters choose to self-sabotage within the enclave of comfort, monetary stability, and whiteness, despite having the resources to thrive. At times it feels illogical that we keep reading these stories and spotlighting these women, even as more dire global issues continue to compete for media attention.

<em>Jubs and Dubs</em>, 2024 — *Jubs and Dubs*, 2024

<em>Lol Kristen!</em>, 2024 — *Lol Kristen!*, 2024

In the simplest justification, and in true Fleabag fashion, it’s fun to check out from the pressures of the world, especially if you inherently hold the privilege to do so. People love these stories about this type of woman as a way to live vicariously through someone whose conventional beauty and status allows them to suffer virtually no consequences. They will continue to live a life of relative ease as long as the mess they create while doing it toes certain social and legal lines. People will choose to read about a girl walking around New York in Prada ballet flats, defecating in the foyer of an art gallery she used to work at because she got fired. This doesn’t mean she should be used as the beacon of morality and fairness, but who doesn’t enjoy imagining a life spent following all of one’s worst impulses?

WGW is on view at Rose Easton Gallery until June 15, 2024.

Art

Goodnight Sweet Thing

Robert Greene, the author of The 48 Laws of Power once said that power is an invisible realm that envelopes society, where people continually battle each other though no one is trained to talk about it. Only when you make mistakes do you realize how political people are.

The rules of the game are simple, a referee in a fetish mask (Joshua Weidenmiller) exclaims to the crowd. Please. Don’t. Hurt. Me. Borrowing lines from Brache’s poems, the actors’ fragmented dialogues are a jarring display of cognitive dissonance in a three tableau narrative involving sports, the psyche, and polite society. The opponents, named Nothing Girl and Mary Magdalene, face each other in front of the nation’s flag, topping each other from the bottom, moving in-sync, writhing in a pool of red gelatin. The audience laughs, not knowing what to expect next. In the second scene, Josh plays an analyst examining Betsey in a lounge chair, an element of Jungian and Freudian influence on the night’s inquiries. Among those inquiries, the show’s co-directors probe into America’s obsession with the masking of oneself in order to survive and exist in reality; the juxtaposition of constraint and consequence deeply embedded in our daily roles.

“Sports mirror the facade of contemporary life,” Sigrid describes her and Brache’s vision for the evening, or poetry in motion, as she calls it. “We’re expected to perform, constantly pitted against one another within the capitalist machine under the scrutiny of a faceless judge.” One summary of the show could be more or less a marriage of central ideas revolving around interdependence, the unconscious, and PsychologyToday.com.

The third act ends with a play off of a prom scene, a celebratory tradition rooted in gendered competition and peer judgments. It would make sense that the use of Jell-O also holds origins as a 20th century symbol of another American invention—specifically aspic, molded vessels that once encapsulated long hours of domestic female labor as privileged entertainment. Inspired by the fetish magazine Blushes, Brache’s book cover depicts an AI-generated image of a mannequin-like woman with a man pouring water over her legs, imbued with an idyllic quality aesthetically referencing JCPenney catalogs from the ‘80s and conventional (or otherwise sanitized) notions of beauty.

Victorian era music plays in the background. Nothing Girl pushes Mary forward, who prays on her backside. Why does being sick last so long? She screams. “She’s sick because she’s staring at her reflection,” explains Sigrid. “She’s sick because she is using others, because she has to work too much, or maybe, because the machine is sick."