WAMBUI COLLYMORE'S ART CONTESTS CONCEPTS OF AFRICAN BEAUTY

                CONTESTED CONCEPTS OF AFRICAN BEAUTY AT ONE OFF GALLERY

      Wambui Collymore in her Pink Room, part of her Akili Ni Nywele installation at One Off Gallery

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (published 8 August 2021)

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’

It’s an idiom we often hear as one way to define the concept of beauty.

Yet in her art installation, currently on at One Off Gallery entitled ‘Akili ni Nywele–Series III’

 Wambui Kamiru Colleymore calls into question both the concept of ‘beauty’ and its practice by African women. More precisely, she explores how African women and other women of color are affected by society’s definitions of beauty and the broader theme of femininity.

For instance, who defines what constitutes Black beauty and femininity? And where did these concepts come from in the first place.

Where do African girls pick up Western concepts of beauty and Feminity? From 2nd hand Barbie dolls

These are concerns most women heading to the hair salon probably don’t give a second thought. But Wambui wants black women to look more critically into something she calls the politics of femininity. For her, the stakes are high.

“I want women to be free to choose how they look and not feel dictated to by society,” she says.

Speaking to DN Lifestyle shortly after her exhibition/installation opened on July 31st, Wambui recalls that she had started back in 2017 in a previous installation to raise the issue of Black femininity, who defines it, how, and why? Back then, this Oxford University African history master’s graduate explored the way young girls are socialized from an early age to imbibe Western concepts of beauty, romantic love, and blond-haired, blue-eyed standards of femininity represented in the shape of second-hand Barbie dolls.

“Society as a whole defines what African women [and girls] are meant to do to be beautiful and feminine,” says Wambui. To illustrate that point, one whole room in the gallery presents a similar representation of her 2017 show. As before, (only on a much larger scale) she paints the room pure pink, which, of course, is the stereotypic color symbol for feminine. It has a bookcase-filled with romantic novels and a whole shelf filled with mitumba white Barbie dolls. The room also has a matching pink ‘vanity’ table complete with a mirror and pictures of ‘pretty’ little white girls who invisibly plant foreign concepts of beauty in little black girls’ minds.

       How much trouble and expense to women take to look glamorous, according to Western taste?

Wambui even created a carpet made out of real and artificial wavey long hair, the type she says that wealthy Black women (since human hair is pricey) stitch or glue onto their African hair.

To illustrate how wearing human hair, either in the shape of a wig or glued-on extensions, Wambui had two professionals, one a makeup artist, Nzilani Kimani, the other a photographer, Emmanuel Jambo help her illustrate the extent to which women will go to meet Western standards of beautiful.

But what makes us believe Wambui looks more ‘beautiful’ wearing a human hair weave and perfect make up?

To challenge the belief that artificial hair is somehow superior to natural African hair, Wambui takes over another One Off room, the Loft, to screen a seven minute split-screen video. One side of it reveals Wambui in a bathroom surgically cutting off her long artificial braids layer by layer. She’s symbolically silenced with a red tape across her mouth, removed only after all the artificial hair is gone. The other side is set in the same bathroom, only now all we see are her feet and the sliced braids fallen to the floor. In sum, the video suggests that the braids, being alien, were also depriving her of her own power to speak and think freely. To confirm that conclusion, Wambui returns in the video wearing a turban towel which she removes to reveal her natural hair and a freshly washed face that looks equally attractive but more authentic than the bewigged Wambui.

Hair plays such a major role in urban African women’s lives, they can frequently spend hours at the Salon having their hair either braided, chemically-straightened, or extended with human or artificial (plastic) hair pieces.

That reality led Wambui to curate one final room (the biggest one in One Off’s former Stable) which she fills with all the paraphernalia one can find in the best upmarket beauty salons. All painted a bright shiny silver, she includes one large table display of essential tools used by the best hair stylists, namely the hand-held hair dryers, brushes, curlers, combs and even hot combs. She even brought in three second-hand sitdown hairdryers to illustrate just how industrialized the African women’s hair industry is.

Wambui's PInk Room has a Human Hair carpet just to illustrate how women wear human hair wigs and extensions as signs of wealth and 'beauty

But if African hair has generated a huge industry of hair, Wambui suggests there is also a politics of hair that Black women need to understand.

There is nothing naturally beautiful about wigs and weaves, Wambui’s show seems to say. Women and girls have been socialized to believe that standards of beauty and femininity are the norm without realizing they are actually colonial hangovers. Once they understand that, they can be free to choose for themselves how they want to look and how they define what is beautiful, both within and without themselves.

“I want my daughters to grow up making up their own minds how they want to look and be,” says Wambui who quotes the Kiswahili proverb to summarize what her show means to her:

“Akili ni  nywele, kila mtu ana zake. (Intelligence is like hair, everyone has their own).”