Fowler in Focus: The Art of Hair in Africa

The Fowler Museum at the University of California Los Angeles has opened a new exhibition presenting an array of finely sculpted combs and hairpins from Africa and its diasporas, along with the film Me Broni Ba/My White Baby by Ghanaian-American filmmaker Akosua Adoma Owusu. It explores the notions of ideal beauty and social status associated with hair among many African cultures. The juxtaposition of traditional hairpins and combs made from rare materials with an avant-garde contemporary film raises questions about constructions of identity in Africa from the colonial period to today.

View the official exhibition website.

Comb  -  Probably Djuka, Surinam  -  20th century

Comb  -  Asante, Ghana  -  ca 1900

Comb  -  Chokwe, D.R. Congo

Images courtesy of the Fowler Museum, UCLA

Origins of the Afro Comb at the Fitzwilliam Museum

The 6,000-year history of the afro comb, its extraordinary impact on cultures worldwide, and community stories relating to hair today are being explored in this new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England. Material culture on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum includes hundreds of remarkable combs - from pre-dynastic Egypt to modern-day combs referencing the Black Power Movement - as well as associated images and sculpture showing the wide variety of hair styles found in Africa and around the world. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Image courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum