Paola Elizabeth Mateo I pull, detangle, twist, fluff, set and sew different textures and different colors of hair, combing them into one piece as I pierce them with nails, penetrating each strand with the expectation of society. I hang them on walls, force them into corners, wear them and make them stand alone. This series of work displays the various methods in which I use both artificial and real hair to address the structural and systemic racism that originate within a post colonial society and made its way into the home and minds of afro latinx. The work speaks to various emotions in experiencing auto-phobia (hatred of oneself), racism within the latinx community, confusion of origin and the stereotypical stigmas that follow the choice of not conforming to eurocentric standards. In my performance ‘Para ti pt.2’, I constructed a dress of real hair that I wore in the Dominican Republic, Reading, Pennsylvania and New York. The purpose for constructing this dress was to ridicule the idea of forcing my hair into a eurocentric state that it is not naturally in.
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