Braiding Circle

Join us for the newest installment of our 2021 David C. Driskell Fellow, Veronica Perez’s Hair Braiding Circle. Hosted by Indigo Arts Alliance, Veronica will lead participants in a guided braiding session that encourages us to dig deeper into our relationship with our hair. These braiding circles are intimate community gatherings focused on braiding a three strand braid while conversing about identity, experience, and belonging.

In addition to braiding, participants of the workshops are invited to record a personal story about the role hair played in their lives. Recording will be optional, but participating individuals will receive a small honorarium for their contribution to the exhibition.

Participants' braiding contributions as well as the hair stories recordings will be incorporated into a large scale sculpture installation that will be a part of an exhibition at the CMCA in the summer of 2022.

All materials will be supplied. Ages 16+.

PLEASE NOTE: For the health and safety expectations, all attendees at indoor events and performances are required to provide proof of up to date vaccines against the COVID-19 virus, or a negative PCR test from within the previous 48 hours or a negative ‘Rapid Test’ from the previous 12 hours. It is necessary to also show a legal photo identification along with your vaccination proof, or test result. All proof may be original or digital. Participants are asked to remain masked. There will be extra masks and hand sanitizer stations provided.

Learn more:

Veronica Perez is a multidisciplinary artist living in Maine. She utilizes synthetic hair, discarded objects, and other unconventional materials such as sugar and construction remnants in her sculptural works to conceal and reveal hidden and forgotten parts of ones’ identity. Perez creates intense personal moments by means of material hybridization and challenging ideals of beauty. Her chosen material aims to comments on contemporary Latinx and feminist issues which she explores through notions of loss, time and trauma. In 2020, she was awarded the Ellis-Beauregard Fellowship in the Visual Arts and in 2021 began her residency at the David C. Driskell Black Seed Studio Fellowship in Portland, Maine. She is one of the inaugural Lunder Institute for American Art fellows at the Colby Museum of Art in Maine. In 2022, Perez will be presenting her first solo exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Arts in Rockland, Maine.

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