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1998

cloth and thread

These delicately crafted pieces in Sonya Clark's "Wig Series" examine ordered structure and symmetry in African American hairstyling culture. These five works are part of a larger series inspired by the Fibonacci sequence of numbers; they are parted into sections of 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8, respectively. As disembodied domes, they underscore the head's spiritual importance-across several African traditions-as the home of the soul.

Parting the hair in two is an outward recognition of the inner structure of the hemispheres of the brain. "Hemi" speaks to the forced migration of enslaved Africans crossing from one hemisphere of earth to the other.

Credit

Purchase, through the Rudolph and Louise Langer Fund