Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, North and Central America
Date:
2017; scanned 2022
Caption:
Tanekeya Word describes herself and her work as “Afrofuturist feminist,” “Post-Warhol,” and “Post-Basquiat,” with a focus on “celebrating the black woman… past, present, and future.” Black women are central to her scholarship and her art. Her natural hair journey plays a central role in many of her pieces, including the Supernova Study series seen here. Word says that “hair is a dominant theme in my artwork” because “hair is magical” and central when “creating stories of Black women.”
In this series she uses Relief print (letterpress), gouache, Neocolor crayons, and collage, on custom marble paper. Word notes that by “extracting parts of the letterpress print and collaging images and mappings of space and the natural world within the head and hairstyle, I call upon the African Diaspora’s continuum where traditions are mindfully reshaped through the passage of time and Black womanhood is counter-mapped via an emic perspective.”
A supernova is an interstellar event where a star explodes as it transitions to either a black hole or is destroyed. The root word of supernova, “nova,” is Latin for “new” because the star will temporarily appear to be a new, exceptionally bright star. These violent events are the creation source for several elements, including oxygen and rubidium, and new stars elsewhere in the galaxy. With this astrological framework, Word’s work shows how Black women can cause massive change and seismic shifts in their environments, near and far, as they grow and evolve with a focus on the role of natural hair.
Description:
A digital scan (TIFF) of an original watercolor and ink sketch for the series "Supernova Study" from the notebook of Tankeya Word. The sketch is done in black ink on custom marbled paper, washed with watercolors, and depicts an elaborate, Fulani-inspired, futuristic protective hairstyle of a woman with her back to the viewer. She is depicted from the shoulders up with her head and shoulders in blue and purple watercolor against an orange watercolor background. Her hair is parted down the center of her scalp to the nape and arranged into rows of braids or twists. Woven into the center of the hair part is a double five-pointed star shape pattern. The loose ends have been gathered up and styled into two large, round, spoked wheel shapes on either side of her head. The top and bottom spokes on each wheel feature two five-pointed stars twisted into the center of each spoke. The top edge of the print also has a purple watercolor tint.
