Ashanté Kindle: Solace in What Remains

4 October - 23 November 2024
  • Johnson Lowe Gallery is pleased to present its second Project Space exhibition with Ashante Kindle, Solace in What Remains. Opening on October 4th, with a reception from 6-9 pm, and coinciding with Atlanta Art Week and Atlanta Art Fair.
     
    Solace in What Remains is an exploration of material transformation and the cultural significance of Black hair—its textures, history, and rituals—serving as its bedrock. This exhibition presents two interrelated bodies of work that deepen the engagement with a phenomenon central to African and African diasporic cultures—hair as a ritualistic, intimate, and symbolically rich site of where community and individual identity converge. Kindle employs a macro/micro analytical approach, wherein hair coloring is conceptualized as an expansive chromatic field, and the S curl is reimagined as a petri dish, presenting an assortment of puesdomolecular hair adornments.
  • Looking through these detail images of the work you can see glimpses of people from popular a hair styling magazines, hair styling strips, barrettes, elastics and plenty other hair care products that are used in the care that goes into Black hair. The color on the surface of the tondos are achieved with a combination of acrylic paint and hair dye from the infamous Dark & Lovely brand, a product line from L'Oreal marketed to black women for decades that is currently in active litigation as over 7,000 people have joined the lawsuit claiming the hair products gave them cancers.
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  • At the heart of the exhibition are three circular tondos from the artist's Stain Painting series, rendered in acrylic and hair dye. These ethereal, chromatic landscapes, shaped by their circular forms, evoke the head or crown—a potent symbol of authority, dignity, and identity. The repurposed stretchers and the use of hair dye emerged during Kindle’s fellowship with NXTHVN (2022-2023), where she began incorporating hair dyes from the infamous Dark & Lovely brand, a product line from L'Oreal marketed to black women. With evocative names like Red Hot Rhythm, Honey Blonde, and Poppin Pink, these dyes transcend their material origins, turning these works into sites of transformation, renewal, and aspiration.
     
    The tension between the colorful, atmospheric stain paintings and the heavily textured black tondos creates a dialogue about the many ways Black hair can be represented and honored—whether through soft expanses of color or through rich, tactile layers. Both approaches explore the depth of history, identity, and beauty embedded in Black hair, bringing to light its profound cultural and personal significance.