Artist Statement

My research explores issues of identity where I use the line as a way to speak about our relationships to postcolonial structures, systems of power, and their implication to collective suppositions about difference. I aim to create works that disrupts the white gaze and other passive notions of viewing "the other", and to question standing narratives and systems that shape how identities are understood. It is about looking, and deeper critical thinking. Content for the work comes out of a need to unpack my own awakening to the racially charged social, political, and cultural histories of black peoples. I am interested in those things that shape our understanding of "black culture".

Using the curly line paired with historical objects becomes a way to speak to issues of race, gender, beauty, class and indeed labor. In my work the curly line becomes the black body, and at other times it lives within the decorative, ornate space that connects us back to the formal language of drawing, and mark making. I enjoy this shift between hair and line, between political and nonpolitical, how at one moment the work is read as hair while at other times it is simply a beautiful gesture. The line serves many purposes. It is both drawing as well as signifier for the black body, allowing for complex, layered conversations that address ideas of displacement, otherness and issues related to misrepresentations in popular culture.
©Sharon Norwood