Hot Comb (2025)

Ceramics

(18 in × 8 in × 5 in) 

Hot Comb (2025) reimagines the cultural and historical weight of Black hair care through sculptural abstraction. The ceramic form, with porous openings and skeletal contours, recalls both the structure of a hot comb and the tension of heat, transformation, and resilience associated with it. Historically, the hot comb symbolized assimilation and resistance, an invention born from the ingenuity of Black inventors like Annie Malone and Madam C.J. Walker, who transformed tools of conformity into instruments of empowerment. The hot comb also carries complex emotional residue: the smell of burning hair, the ritual of pressing, and the intergenerational lessons tied to beauty, respectability, and survival.

The blackened ceramic surface echoes charred metal, evoking both endurance and transformation through fire, while eucalyptus, known for its healing and cleansing properties introduces an element of restoration. This contrast between the industrial and the organic reclaims the narrative of care from one of pain to one of renewal. As an artist I ask how tools of grooming have shaped collective identity and bodily autonomy within the African diaspora. I find myself transforming everyday object into a monument of cultural memory, situating beauty as both a site of struggle and a testament to survival.