Lead With Your Looks, hunny Pony Beads and Kanekalon Hair. Currently on view @_smoca through January 2022 apart of Forever Becoming. I’ve always been interested in the quiet narratives patterns create beneath their surface. Lead With Your Looks is apart of a series of tapestry like sculptures using synthetic braided hair and pony beads to create intricate patterns and designs to tell stories, signify identity, and explore the stages of grief. The use of braided hair employs a connection among the ways in which we protect ourselves. Hair braiding within Black cultures simultaneously serves as both a form of adornment and protection against the structurally fragile nature of Black hair, hence the name “protective style”. Pony beads evoke a sense of childlike nostalgia, bringing oneself back to a time of innocence and vulnerability, a mind state similar to one we crave to reconnect with in the face of trauma and grief. The phrase Lead With Your Looks serves as reclamation of power and body autonomy when confronting a society that often strips women of being able to exist with both allowing us to take back ownership of our bodies, sexual power, and autonomy.