Visual artists are always experimenting with mediums and techniques to push the limits of making art and innovating new art forms. In fact, one can argue that the hallmark of contemporary art is to perpetuate the dynamism of art.

As more and more artists of African descent are using unique mediums like this metal foil painting listed on the Aworanka website, a New Jersey-based Nigerian visual artist is adding yet another uncommon technique to making art – by using black human hair sourced from barbershops in New Jersey, Nigeria, and Morocco to create her artworks. 

Adebunmi Gbadebo began her unusual art journey in the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she decided to counter the stereotypical nature of art history and use her art as a form of identity for people who look like her to find their place in art history as well. Thus, she chose to make art pieces rooted in the Black culture by using black hair from people from the African Diaspora to create her art pieces. 

According to Gbadebo in a chat she had with BBC, she decided to use Black human hair instead of traditional art materials because of the history and ancestry that is embedded in a single strand, and how “that strand connects us back to the continent, to Africa.”  She said she wanted all to see Black human hair as something powerful that needs to be respected, as something that should take up space in ‘traditional’ art galleries.

Born in New Jersey, USA, to Nigerian parents, Gbadebo, who is now based in Newark, disclosed that she sourced Black human hair from her local community barbershops and those in Nigeria and Morocco as well; just as people who had heard about her quest to utilize Black human hair in her works voluntarily mail her their hair sometimes.

According to her, the local barbershops and people’s homes became her art store and they trusted her enough to give a piece of their hair to her to immortalize in her art pieces.

Speaking about her first human-hair art on canvas creation, titled ‘Dada’, Gbadebo remarked that “I have sewn hair to canvas, and I hand sew most of my work. The needle replaces my brush, and instantly, the process became more involved allowing me to pierce through surfaces to insert “nappy” hair.”

“The needle also slows the process and reflects that of a hairdresser or a mother working on her child’s head that rests in between her thighs. I am looking for ways to integrate genealogies of the diaspora with critical discourse through my use of hair!” she added.

Gbadebo’s recent exhibition at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York was a spectacle in daring art expression. For the exhibition titled A Dilemma of Inheritance, she intentionally and beautifully combined Black hair, cotton, rice paper, and different shades of blue to expertly weave the focus on her True Blue portraits which were inspired by the testimony of journalist and author Ta-Neshi Coates at a reparations hearing. Coates had said at the hearings that, “we recognize our lineage as a generational trust, as inheritance, and the real dilemma posed by reparations is just that: a dilemma of inheritance. It is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery.”

“As an artist, I’m confronting my relationship with the color blue, Indigo, and materials cotton and rice in the context of their origins as commodities born of violence and enslavement,” said Gbadebo on how Coates’ words inspired the origins of the works at her exhibition. “I’m interested in the whole system that produced these materials and how its memory has been treated.”