Alisa Banks, Edges: Cornrow (2009), paper, leather, and synthetic hair .

Alisa Banks, Edges: Lace Braid (2009), paper, leather, and synthetic hair .

Alisa Banks, Edges: Thread Wrap (2009), paper, leather, and synthetic hair .

Alisa Banks, Edges: Twist (2009), paper, leather, and synthetic hair .

Alisa Banks, Edges: Cornrow (2009), paper, leather, and synthetic hair .

The hair treatment symbolizes how much activity, creativity and life happens on the “edges” of mainstream society, regardless of whether or not it is recognized.

—Alisa Banks

David Hammons, Untitled (Rock Head) (1998), stone, hair, and shoe polish container.

David Hammons, Untitled (Rock Head) (1998), stone, hair, and shoe polish container.

Our hair is positive, it's powerful, look what it can do. There's nothing negative about our images, it all depends on who is seeing it and we've been depending on someone else's sight...

—David Hammons, 1977

Sonya Clark, Writer Type (2016), Remington typewriter and human hair.

Sonya Clark, Writer Type (2016), Remington typewriter and human hair.

African-American hair has a lot that is said about it and has a lot to say. [...]

Hair is a language.

 

—Sonya Clark, 2017

Chantal Gibson, The Braided Book: An Altered Canadian History (2010).

Because you were my first book

Because yours was my first face

 

Because your first look was sorrow

Because your second was love

 

—Chantal Gibson

"Subordinate Clause," How She Read (Caitlin, 2019)

[B]ook art, in the sense of book sculpture, begins in disuse. This is its primal wound, the injury done to transmission.

 

—Garrett Stewart, Bookwork (2013)

Alisa Banks, Wrongful Termination (2019), paper, leather, ink, plastic, and synthetic hair .

As much processes as objects, media are not merely storage mechanisms somehow independent of the acts of reading they record

.

 

—Craig Dworkin, No Medium (2013)

Alisa Banks, Wrongful Termination (2019), paper, leather, ink, plastic, and synthetic hair .

To be other is to have your history altered if not erased [...] To be conscious of these negative forces is a political act. To thrive in spite of them is a political act.

 

—Alisa Banks (2019)

Alisa Banks, Wrongful Termination (2019), paper, leather, ink, plastic, and synthetic hair .

Alisa Banks, Edges: Cornrow (2009), paper, leather, and synthetic hair .