Jheri Now, Curl Later

2001

This early work by Mark Bradford references the artist’s upbringing around his mother’s beauty shop in south Los Angeles and his own background as a professional hairdresser. The title riffs on the Jheri curl—a popular Black hairstyle in the 1980s and 1990s—and reads like a piece of banter or an inside joke tossed around the tight-knit community of a Black hair salon. Bradford collaged and scorched end papers (thin rectangular sheets used to protect a client’s hair during a perm) to create this multilayered and immersive abstraction. The use of a material with deeply personal ties expands the artist’s visual play of shapes, colors, opacities, and text to include conversations around gender and race.