The Hair Issue

TN "The Front Cover" 2019

Hello and welcome to a very special action project for Rhetoric. For this action project, we were asked to create an art piece that will bring people together around a certain issue. This is based on the tribute to the Chicago Freedom Movement in Marquette Park. The piece notably featured many languages, something I thought was very important for creating my own work of art to bring people together. I am especially proud of this AP and I hope that this translates through the work that I put into it. There are 2 pieces to the artwork. First, is a commercial parody to bring light to lack of diversity in television and second, mock magazine editorial photographs to highlight the lack of diversity in fashion magazines.


                                                                           HAIR from T N on Vimeo.

TN "Nissrine" 2019
My Hair Is Fierce in French 

TN "Shanet" 2019
My Hair is Angelic in Spanish

TN "Georgette" 2019
My Hair is Good in Kirundi

Artist Statement

As a woman of color, I do not see myself reflected in the media.
Especially media that is meant to sell me something. I want to change this,
I want to change the narrative that the only time you can use a woman of color
on television or on print is when you are directly talking about problems surrounding us.
That is why I created this piece. This piece is meant to act as a mirror for women of color to be able to see themselves in spaces where they are usually ignored. When people look at this piece I want people to feel comfortable. I do not want this to feel foreign or different. This piece is meant to be art that challenges the status quo but is still allowed to be fun and beautiful. It should, however, start conversations in white spaces about why we don't see people like this in fashion magazines.
It's simply a fact that in the past 30 years only 30 women of color have been on the cover of Vogue Magazine. For scale, there have been 412 white women on the cover, and everything about that does not sit right with me. My piece is meant to show women of color as fashionable, without changing to make white Americans comfortable (hence the native languages represented). Not only are these publications racially-biased, but they are also colorist. In a recent study, 90% of WOC in magazines are either light or medium skin tones. Yes, you should feel embarrassed because the fact is that it is simply more profitable to market towards people of color, big corporations just don't want to.
I chose two media for this art piece because I wanted to show two different advertising methods. I thought photography would be best for a photo-shoot that showed these beautiful women of color editorially. The advertisement shows these women of color having fun which is a radical act in itself. It is very rare to see women of color having fun or not facing some type of adversity in mass media; this challenges that. I used Pathos throughout this art piece. The fun that is being had in the commercial appeals to pathos because it is so human. The beauty of the images also appeals to pathos. Ideally, I would want this piece to be a huge social media campaign that other women of color could add to. It would be really amazing to see all types of women from all around the world contributing to this art piece.

Citations 

Muller, Marissa G. “A New Study Shows Just How Bad Diversity in Hollywood Is.” W Magazine, 27 Feb. 2018

Neuendorf, Kimberly A. "The content analysis guidebook". Sage, 2016.


Owens, Tori. “As America Grows More Diverse, Fashion Magazine Covers Are Slow to Show Progress.” Peninsula Press, 25 Oct. 2017