Hair Flips Artist Diane Jacobs’ Perception of the World

by Shana Thornton-Morris

People are repulsed by and obsessed with hair. We worry with it, manipulate it, punish it, alter it, style it, redesign again and again, cry as a result of its unruliness, and use it as a measuring stick by which to judge others. 

In her artist’s statement, Diane Jacobs, a visual artist from Portland, Oregon, braids the cultural superstitions surrounding human hair alongside the controlling act of forcefully shaving a person’s head for incarceration. After shaving her head in Italy in 1993, Diane began noticing other women with bald heads and the stigma placed on a person’s hair depending on their cultural background. She said that she felt “liberated” as a result of losing her locks, and began to notice the implications of hair types and styles as well as the racial and ethnic stigmas of hair.

As a self-proclaimed book artist, Diane’s artwork began with explorations in typeface and derogatory words used against women. Through her interviews with women about derogatory words used as slurs against them or that they had hurled toward other women, Diane encountered different perceptions for words. After weaving strands of paper into a bra, panties, and wigs that were printed with derogatory words, her work “unconsciously” underwent a metamorphosis to include hair as well as transparent or reflective globes and spheres symbolic of thought and ideologies. She asked friends for hair and used her own, adding an element of the exceptionally personal and intimate to her installations and mixed media images. In a recent lecture, Diane said, “I use hair because I am interested in the texture and the color range. It comes from a person, a personal intimate place. It’s loaded and I like that.” And later she said, “Using text in my work just made me think about what I was trying to say more.”

While she continues to print typeface for her installations and images, the hair tells its own stories. As Diane writes on her website, hair is encoded with an individual’s DNA. Receiving hair from people with various ethnic and racial backgrounds, Diane saw a reflection of the world within the different colors on an individual strand of hair. She discovered the stories of generations. People who intentionally cut their hair for Diane’s art entrust her with their personal histories as well as the DNA history of their families. Even strangers feel compelled to mail her chunks, braids, clips, curls of their hair. She works with an undying lineage of former comb-overs, perms, pigtails, french braids, cornrows, bobs, layers, buns, and mohawks.

Certain religious doctrines project spiritual and/or personal power onto a person’s hair and refuse to cut their divine locks (Diane mentions Rastafarians, Sikhs, and Hasidic Jews on her website). Still, some Christian fundamentalist groups, like Pentecostals, forbid women to cut their hair. Diane has sewn stars and diamonds with individual strands of hair. Those symbols reflect the diverse points of view concerning hair. It is trash under the feet of women at the beauty parlor, a sacred locket pressed into a photo album or keepsake box, a magical charm, spiritual power, and a controlled growth. The absence of it can be an oppressive humiliation, a self-conscious blemish, and an act of transformation. The process of transformation materializes in Diane’s work.

After George Bush’s controversial first election, Diane created a small book of hand-made paper (shredded New York Times and LA Times were used to make the paper) and hair. She called it “The Hairy Times” in order to show the manipulation and confusion of the major media outlets within the United States. “The Hairy Times”, and her work following it, questions political perceptions.

While her online gallery contains images of the majority of her work, I was able to see three of her pieces in person at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN, where she is currently one of six artists from Portland, Oregon, with work on display in the exhibition, “Six Points.” 

Global Inversion, 2008, 7′ x 5′, felt and human hair, acrylic ball

In the piece “Global Inversion”, Diane sewed hair into the image of an inverted world map on a 7′x5′ piece of felt. Hanging in front of the map is a small reflective globe (reminds me of a smooth, bald head), through which the map appears right-side-up (due to the flipped reflection, the globe has a map of hair). Her image reveals the small personal way that we often encounter views of the outside world. Often, the world apart from ourselves and our own culture appears upside down or backwards. Diane said that world change requires a major transformation. Her work searches for a point of unification while giving voice to divisive opinions or ways of looking at an object as well as the world.

Inspired by the book “Abolition Democracy” by Angela Davis, the portfolio “REP-HAIR-ATION” uses text, images, and hair to display a definition of incarceration, illustrating how the US penal system is designed as a continuation of the institution of slavery. Diane gives voice to the separation felt by children of inmates. With a perception for dual meanings, one page of the portfolio shows two pairs of scissors and an unfinished, unraveling braid that has been snipped away from the scalp—a reminder of the identity loss behind repetitious steel bars as well as the children who have been cut off from their parents.

Diane Jacob’s work is conditioned in dual meanings: the intimate and the public. From the derogatory to the sacred, Diane combs out spaces that entangle viewers in their perception of women, hair, and world change. The people who give hair to Diane allow her to make a collective, political statement through the use of a personal medium.

Shana Thornton-Morris reads about, researches, and explores her curiosities. She also blogs frequently at http://storytimeout.blogspot.com/