Solace is part of the most recent body of work by Trinidadian-American artist Allana Clarke (b. 1987, West Indies), through which Clarke expresses struggle and ritualistic transformation through performative gestures embedded in sculptures made from 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.”

For Solace—which is 9 and a half feet long and five feet tall—Clarke used 900 bottles of hair bonding glue, and made the work over the course of three months while at NXHVN, an artist residency in New Haven, Connecticut.

“I was just in the studio every single day and using that time as an escape from the world, and the immense amount of trauma I was absorbing,” Clarke says. “It was a moment when I was feeling extremely helpless and hopeless and just thinking about my body’s place in these conversations and this struggle. I needed to be away from it and feel human again. I needed to orient myself towards futurity; towards a future where Black bodies can be articulated in a way they’ve never been before. My practice has been a journey of unlearning and establishing myself as an autonomous and critical human being. It's so much to shed, I don’t know if anyone can get there, there's so much rebuilding to do. My practice it the process of that.”