Wednesday, April 1, 2015
KCET Feature on Alumna Lili Bernard
Carlota Leading the People, Oil on Canvas, 72”x60″ © 2011 by Lili Bernard
KCET Artbound profiles alumna Lili Bernard (MFA Public Practice ’14) and her work.
Lili Bernard: Fighting Trauma With Art
By Liz Ohanesian
“Oshun Altar-Hair Salon” by Lili Bernard pops out from against a wall inside L.A. Artcore, where it is on view until April 5 for “Pulse of L.A.,” a juried show featuring 23 female artists. The bright yellow table is decked out with crosses and beads, shells and baubles. There’s a prayer candle under the table. A mirror, comb and hairdryer hang from the side. Above it is a poster made to look like an ad for the latest hair product, boasting slogans like “Get your sweat on!” and “Racial Self-Hatred get thee gone!” In the center of the poster, Bernard poses with her daughter in a photo taken by artist Toni Scott. Both mother and daughter wear their hair in a natural style.
The altar is part of a bigger series called “Donning and Dismissal of the Conqueror’s Coiffure.” When presented in full, there are multiple altars that bring together Afro-Cuban religious traditions with elements of the hair salon. The series also includes a performance piece, where women wet their hair — “like a Baptism,” Bernard explains — to reveal their natural curls.
“There’s a lot of trauma for black women with regard to their hair,” says Bernard inside her home studio. She talks about the physical pain that can be caused by straightening hair, using chemicals that burn or wearing weaves that are tightly sewn in with natural hair. She also talks about the emotional trauma that comes with hair, the taunts that children have faced because of the smell of hair relaxing products or because a swim in a pool revealed one’s hair texture. She speaks personally about family pressure regarding her own hair, mentioning the criticism she received from her parents when she visited them with a natural hairstyle. “There’s so much tremendous pressure from the family, the black family, to try and make you look white,” she says. Read more here.
Source: KCET Artbound
