Collection: Gina Perry Collection

"I am a former teacher, photographer, director and artist. As a fiber artist, I have been knitting since I was six years old.

 I began needle felting as an artist in 2021. My current project is titled Crowns. As descendants, we have always been proud of our hair, and the various styles we use. In Africa, there are various cultures that go to painstaking efforts to style their hair."

 Although she has been working in this medium for a short time, she has created a series called “Crowns”.

 The concept behind Crowns is to show how people of the African continent and those of the diaspora, adorn their heads. In most African cultures, hair is treated with reverence; it symbolizes social status, spirituality, tribe and marital status etc. It is for these reasons hair was treated with a lot of love and care. When we were kidnapped from Africa, our hair was often shorn, and we were not allowed to take care of our hair the way we did when we lived in Africa. Much of this was because white realized that our hair held clues to who we were as a people and by taking that, we lost relevance to our heritage, thus putting us in “our place”. Even today, many natural black hair and hair styles are looked down upon, ostracized and condemned for simply being styled in the way that suits our hair the best. We have been led to believe that the straight, flat hair of white people, is superior to our own natural hair. In many cases, the white population of America and other countries show verbal and oral criticism of our hair style choices.

Each bust in this series is created through research-based information, to understand the customs and significance of the various cultures. Currently, the focus is on the African continent, but will eventually show people of African descent throughout the rest of the world. Our crowns are our pride and joy, and it is important to understand how our concept of self is formed in the way we adorn our crowns.