Adrian-Dre Diaz on JAX
Joy’s Piece, 2024, synthetic braiding hair, cardboard, wood, and glass; Big Sister, 2024, synthetic braiding hair, Marley hair, beads, and shells
[Image description: Two sculptural installations, each a mass of styled black hair, hang on a white gallery wall. The two works are connected by many ropes of hair, which drape from the ceiling and the walls, creating a web that extends out into the gallery space.]
Our hair is a living archive of ancestry and personal narrative—an expression of the environment we are born into, inhabit, and seek to occupy. The significance of hair, particularly within the Black community, is not a matter of dead or alive, natural or synthetic. It is a declaration of a lived truth, and proof of a surviving ancestor, whose roots, just as the follicles of your scalp, can be identified as a predetermined authority over one’s developmental trajectory. Positioned as a reclamation of self and history, JAX’s artistic practice transforms hair—an often-overlooked aspect of cultural expression—into a dynamic medium that celebrates the rich, textured lineage of Blackness.
Her installations, which cascade from the walls and ceilings in intricate webs of human and synthetic hair, weave together a tapestry of memory, identity, and continuity. Interwoven with these strands are trinkets, photographs, and assorted memorabilia, further deepening the investigation of that which is inherited. Equally enticing and off-limits, JAX’s work–with its webs beginning to obscure and obstruct the viewer’s path ahead–offers the unique textures and stylings of Black hair as a method of guidance, barrier, and resolution.
My momma said (detail), 2024, synthetic braiding hair, Marley hair, picture frame, clock, grandmother’s glasses
[Image description: A closeup of a dense mass of styled black and red hair, in which is embedded a pair of glasses and a framed picture of a smiling woman holding a baby.]
In response to the various ropes, knots, and tendrils routinely featured in JAX’s work, I reflect on the understated ways in which racial identity can be communicated, for example, curl pattern–and how physical features are not unique to an individual, but rather a signifier of roots beyond generations. JAX’s practice–inspired by the theory of the Mitochondrial Eve, a study that suggests the contemporary species of humans share a common female African ancestor—is a gesture in efforts of reconciling with the Black women in her life. With her braids, twists, and locs, JAX presents Black femmes as the genesis of life and a destination for return.
When I look at the hairstyles on view, I see my mother, my sisters, and aunts. I reflect on the unique ways in which they styled their own and each other’s hair. These sculptures–in all their familiarity, are an homage to all the women before us, and those who have yet to come. Hair, just as the line descending from the Mitochondrial Eve, is a genetic string of interrelationship. My curl pattern was inherited, as were the various blessings and curses received from my bloodline. It is within the subtleties of different styling techniques that JAX reveals narratives of sisterhood, maternal relations, and the Black femme.
My mother has always been the one to braid my hair. Whether we were on good terms or bad, wherever we were–my childhood living room or college apartment–for the hour or so it would take, I was my mother’s son, unsure of how to do it all. As I grew older, I felt an immense shame for still indulging in this nurture, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that one day it would be time to let it go. Ultimately, I could not decide against it in our hyper-individualistic society; this gesture of love was not one I would trade in. This was not a relinquishing of autonomy, but a declaration that my personhood is tied to my community, and that I am who I am because of the love surrounding me.
This is the beauty of and intimacy of braiding hair within the Black community. With each braid, twist, and loc, the neatly styled strands featured in JAX’s work declare, I will be the one who grooms your woes.
Long and Layered, 2024, synthetic braiding hair, Marley hair; OG, 2023, synthetic braiding hair, Marley hair, beads, and shells
[Image description: Photographs of two of JAX’s installations. Their main forms—made up of styled black hair—are hung on adjacent walls, close together on either side of a corner. Many ropes of hair connect the two, while hair also travels up and hangs from pipes on the ceiling.]
In a conversation on the matter of maintaining autonomy as a creative whose work is tied to the body, JAX told me that the establishment of physical boundaries within her installations allow her to immerse the audience not as a viewer of spectacle, but as an inhabitant of phenomena. The audience is not directed to consume her work voyeuristically. Instead, as viewers walk into her installations, we find ourselves unsure of where the intended bounds and permissible engagements are. We ask whether or not we’ve crossed the line, or if the inaccessible was meant to discourage further exploration. The audience is to feel subjected upon, which is translated through her installations that tower above our heads and avalanche below. In these spaces, Blackness, through the eyes of a Black femme, is allowed to regulate and dictate the masses, a subversion of the traditional power structures upheld by white supremacy.
In JAX’s installations, Blackness becomes all-encompassing. All the hair is black, as are the people whose likeness are featured in the entangled memorabilia. Fascinated by black layered on black– which at first appears to be without depth–JAX finds the idea of nuances to be foundational to her practice as a maker who explores a community that is often reduced to a monolith. Her sculptures, which appear uniform at face value, reveal layers beyond one’s presumptions. She stacks twists under braids, and locs under twists, details the viewer only notices under careful observation. Such a nesting of materials is more than conceptual—it manifests visually. We can expect every corner of the ceiling to spew hair, whether it’s mounted on the wall or draped from fixtures. Working in black box rooms when possible, there is an inclination for world building, for the work to usurp the white wall as the standard of propriety and establish Blackness as the hegemony. Although systemic infrastructure would suggest otherwise, JAX affirms that Blackness possesses a boundless capability to shapeshift, to be anything. As a Black Latino in America, I find myself needing the reminder.
Today, more so than ever, I wear my hair unapologetically in the styles that boast my cultural pride. Bantu knots, a frohawk, or wrapped in satin, my values are coded at the top of my head. This act is an homage to my roots, the cultural icons I consumed, and an imitation of the family members I never met. It’s a recognition of resilience–our hair has, in the face of oppression, continued to be a mainstay through which our community has been coded. To this day, hair-based discrimination has not been eradicated–the CROWN Act was only first passed in 2019, and as of 2023, is law in only 23 states. For this reason, I have always understood that the way I twist, braid, or leave out my hair affects the way that I am perceived and treated. Even with this knowledge, I refuse to conceal my identity.
As I look at the tufts of hair strung high and low in JAX’s work, I am reminded of a labor by choice, a practice that can be traced to the dawn of my community. For JAX, braiding is a continued lineage, transformed through the physicality of weaving strands together to address one’s genetic family mechanics. The repetition of braiding and styling hair transcends aesthetics to embody cultural subsistence. It’s a language of love, and a spirit of endurance. You may encounter curls as short as an inch, or braids as long as a yard. Perhaps best exemplified by the title of JAX’s MFA thesis, Carpal Tunnel Crick Cracks in the Tendons of My Flexors, one must have a cultural commitment to the gesture, beyond physical detriment. Even when faced with illness or disorder, a life-long devotion to our ancestors can triumph such complications. It’s never been just hair. Black hair is not only a methodology of preserving tradition, but self-preservation—to occupy space in a cultural white majority whose conventions oppose your expression, and to declare one’s undeniable existence in a land that insists you do not belong.
Viewing JAX’s installations, we are asked to face the enigma of continuity, which functions less linearly than theorized. The present may be equally informed by the past and future. In this clouded timeline, I think about the troubles my people have overcome, that which stays consistent, and the new issues my ancestors could never have imagined. African-American culture is one of resilience: crafted from the semblances of customs we've held onto, and supported by those who chose to interpret the objectively too-far removed. For this reason, creation becomes synonymous to survival. When all else is forcibly removed, you produce. To be black is generative. These thoughts manifest similarly to the clusters of hair whose links are interwoven. Suddenly hair becomes a measure of time, a substitute for the body, the baggage we hold, the love we share, an expression of self, and a whisper for those whose ears can decode the message.
Adrian-Dre Diaz is a writer, curator, and arts administrator in San Diego and Los Angeles.