- Artist or Maker
- Tavares Strachan
The Bahamas, Nassau, active United States, New York, born 1979 - Title
- Fulani (A Map of the Crown)
- Date Made
- 2024
- Medium
- Marble, Flocked hair
- Dimensions
- 24 7/8 × 16 1/4 × 13 1/2 in. (63.18 × 41.28 × 34.29 cm)
- Collecting Area
- Contemporary Art
- Curatorial Notes
Tavares Strachan’s marble portrait busts represent a theoretical figure known in human genetics as Mitochondrial Eve—the most recent common female ancestor of all living humans. Rendered in velvety white marble that deliberately invokes the classical sculptural traditions of Greece and Rome, the subject is intentionally African or Afro-Caribbean in character. Here, her braided hair rises in the soaring, basketlike form associated with Fulani women, nomadic and pastoral people whose communities span West, Central, and northern East Africa today.
The work draws on the profound significance of hair throughout the history of the African diaspora. During the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved Africans used hair as a form of resistance, concealing objects and coded messages within intricately braided patterns. More broadly, these sculptures affirm the enduring cultural meaning of hair practices across the African continent and beyond, where hairstyling has long functioned as a ritual freighted with personal, social, and spiritual significance.
- Copyright
- © Tavares Strachan, photo courtesy of the artist, by Steve Russell Studios
