How did the idea of this project come to life?
A: Driving through Accra one day in early 2022, I had an idea to create hair sculptures in public spaces. At the time I had just found out I was pregnant, and I was feeling hopeful, creative and excited. I am a multidisciplinary artist, jewelery designer and researcher, but since moving to Accra in 2020 I’ve been operating mostly as a hairstylist. For the past few years I’ve been gaining recognition for the hair art I’ve done for commercial, editorial and film projects. But I have always been interested in environmental sustainability and urban development since finishing my undergrad at York University 10 years ago.
I approached Christian about the idea, and it was through collaboration that we were able to come up with more ideas, scout locations, models, and determine the environmental themes. We didn’t know where this project would take us, but I’m glad we followed through because we created an amazing series that really tells a story.
For each of the areas of focus (air pollution, water pollution, transportation, energy, construction, and market economy) we worked with journalist Brian Owusu-Konadu to conduct short interviews with area residents to talk about their experiences in each space. We wanted to capture stories to create an immersive audio experience at our show. We both love Ghanaian music and culture, so we believed a soundscape would be a great addition to the whole vibe. So with those interviews we then created a soundscape with sound engineer Eugene “Atown TSB” Okpoti and guitarist Joshua “Moszi” Nkansah. It was a lot of hard work but it was a labor of love the whole way through.
C: Asia and I have been friends for a minute. Before this project, she reached out to me to shoot her “Moon Masquerade” series that explored the connection between Ghanaian and Caribbean masquerade cultures (which was funded by the Ontario Arts Council). That was our first work together and it came out really well.
So when she reached out to collaborate on another project in early 2022, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know the project was going to be this transformative. And even that day, she told me that she was pregnant, and I was like “Damn! That’s crazy”. The bump wasn’t even showing yet. She said she wanted to take the next year to take our time and create the project. I’ve never worked on a project that took this much time before, it’s almost two years since we started working on this. She was very intentional, and I knew that this was something that shouldn’t be rushed. So we did a lot of scouting, brainstorming, model casting, and meetings. This is the first time I ever collaborated in a way that it felt like we were really building something monumental over a long period of time.
Ghanian hair has such strong historical meaning, tell us about some of the hair styles created through these photos?
C: Ghana is really rich when it comes to indigenous culture, and hair art is native to Ghana. Mostly in the project we used braids and in the incorporation of different objects to signify our connection to the world around us. I’m just glad I got to capture it as well as I did.
A: I am from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, so our cultures overlap in terms of the significance of braid styles for covering meaning, status, and individuality. Therefore, in this project I focused mostly on braid and loc styles. I used wire inserted into braids (sometimes over 6M long!) to then bend and mold into the hair sculptures we used to shoot.
For the Air pollution hair sculptures, I used braids connected from the top of the head of each model to oxygen face masks. This was to signify the urgent need to address air quality in Accra. At times last year, Accra’s air quality was so low, it was comparable to the low quality of infamously bad air quality in big cities like New Dehli, India.
The bicycle hair sculptures were the most fun and challenging to create. They were heavy, so I had to get innovative to find a way for them to balance on the heads of the models.
For the water pollution shoot, we created 6 ft long locs from recycled fishing rope to match the hair aesthetic of the model herself, who had locs. I wanted to create the image that he was connected to the water and all the pollution that cluttered the beach, so the locs needed to also be attached to the plastic waste we found on the beach that day.