The Art of Her Crown

The Art of Her Crown

The Art of Her Crown is an ongoing visual series that celebrates Black beauty, dark skin, and the sculptural elegance of traditional African hairstyles. At its heart, the project is rooted in imagination. I began to ask myself: What would African hairstyles look like today if they had continued to evolve naturally without interruption? Without westernization. Without the dominance of wigs and artificial beauty standards. Without the pressure to alter texture or hide heritage. Through this series, I create hairstyles that feel both ancient and modern. I infuse them with cultural symbols such as cowries which are symbols of wealth, spirituality, and ancestry and shape them into forms that may never have historically existed, but could have. These are imagined continuations. Possible futures. Uninterrupted crowns. The work celebrates the richness of dark skin and the confidence that comes from wearing one’s culture visibly and proudly. Hair, in this series, is not just style it is architecture, identity, and inheritance. Each portrait honors African hairstyling as an art form: intentional, intricate, and powerful. It reframes traditional aesthetics within a contemporary visual language, placing heritage in conversation with modernity rather than in opposition to it. This is not nostalgia. It is reclamation through imagination. The Art of Her Crown continues to grow, each new image expanding the possibilities of what our crowns could be.