Carried Across Tightly is part of a series of performative, wall-mounted works by Trinidadian-American artist Allana Clarke (b. 1987, West Indies). To make these works, Clarke expresses struggle and ritualistic transformation through performative gestures embedded in hair bonding glue, a liquid latex commonly used to adhere hair extensions onto a person’s scalp.

The hair bonding glue Clarke uses is sold in small, 8-ounce bottles over the counter from beauty supply stores. Clarke begins her sculptural process by pouring the hair bonding glue from the small bottles onto panels made of window screen. The bonding glue begins curing from the top, while remaining supple underneath for days or even weeks. During that time, Clarke manipulates the material by scraping it, pulling it, twisting it, and pushing into it with her entire body. This performative process of molding the material through her physical actions manifests as a sculptural relic of the artist literally grappling with her complicated relationship with her medium. Recalling her first interactions with hair bonding glue as a child, Clarke refers to the experiences as “rituals indoctrinating me into a world that is anti-black.” Says Clarke, “I of course have a complicated relationship with this material as these are rituals that were given to me by the matriarchs in my family and rituals that I thought to be normative and adopted them into my beautification practices. As I grew older I came to understand these processes aim to be removing me from notions of and proximity to Blackness, Black hair being something that is political and ‘radical.’ It is though not possible to extract my body from the narrative of Blackness, nor should that be a desire. That is the legacy that was passed down to me.”