I Got Bundles and I Got Flewed Out
(2019)
- Medium
- modacrylic fibre, plastic (beads), cowry shells, elastic bands and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
- Measurements
- (b-hh) 199.0 × 447.0 × 20.8 cm (installed) (canvasses and hair)
- Place/s of Execution
- Detroit, Michigan, United States
- Accession Number
- 2023.594.b-hh
- Department
- Contemporary Art
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2023
© 2019 Tiff Massey. All rights reserved - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
Challenging the capitalist colonisation of Black beauty and identity, Tiff Massey rejects the Eurocentric aesthetics in advertising aimed at Black women. Each of these twenty-two traditionally Black hairstyles is a testament to the cultural significance of Black hair, an emblem of resistance and resilience. Massey’s tableau unfolds against a backdrop image of a salon, teeming with white mannequins – a reminder of the beauty industry’s pervasive use of Caucasian models to peddle products for Black women. This work is a critique of marketing strategies that surreptitiously invalidate the Black aesthetic in favour of a Eurocentric ideal. It asks the viewer to grapple with the uncomfortable truth of the pervasive racial bias inherent in our society’s beauty norms.