EXploring IDEntity
MAKING WOMEN - Online Programming
Explore the Art Museum of South Texas and the exhibition Making Women: Jennifer Ling Datchuk, with Dr. Jarred Wiehe, Assistant Professor of English (TAMU-CC). After reading his response to Datchuk’s work and exhibition, take a listen to our Museum Mixtape and create a version of one of Datchuk’s miniature sculptures based on your own hair and identity.
Dr. Jarred Wiehe
Assistant Professor of English (TAMU-CC) Specializing in:
Restoration and 18th Century British Literature
Drama and Performance Studies, Disability Studies, Theories of Genders and Sexualities
Blonde Bombshell, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, 2014, porcelain and collected hair
EXPLORING IDENTITY
What strikes me about Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s Making Women is the interplay between ceramics and hair, the material and the corporeal, the object and the subject. Hair is so crucial in staking out identity. From policing the boundaries of what is “masculine” or “feminine” to the racially charged politics of hair, hair care, hair touching, Datchuk’s work inherently raises questions about how we recognize and make identities. Alongside of gender and race, hair has historically played an important part in shaping sexual identity.
As someone who studies long 18th century literature and culture, Datchuk’s work makes me think of the ways hair was exchanged in the era as a sign of sexual and romantic attachments. Think about Jane Austen’s novel, Sense and Sensibility, where two young sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, must make sense of the danger of the heteronormative, patriarchal marriage market—a market that left women very little agency or choice. Early on, Marianne falls for the handsome Willoughby (a really bad pairing), and Marianne’s family believes she is engaged to Willoughby because of hair. Her little sister proclaims, “I am sure they will be married soon, for he has got a lock of her hair.”
Like Datchuk’s art, hair was mixed with other materials and exchanged as signs of attachment. Marianne and Elinor notice that the man Elinor is in love with, Edward Farras, has a ring with a plait of hair in it. Marianne assumes that Elinor gave Edward her hair as a sign, and Elinor, assured that it is her hair, assumes that Edward stole a lock. Both sisters end up being mistaken (it’s not Elinor’s hair), but the artefact—hair and metal—gains so much importance as a cipher for sexual desire. We’re asked to think about whose hair it is, how it moves through society on Edward’s hand, the proximity of another circulating in private spheres. When the hair is intertwined with another object—a ring—we blur boundaries between human and material, subject and object, and query how one is attached to others in the world. The exchange of objects secures sexual attachments, and the body is never that far from others. When hair takes on an erotic life with mobility, it shows the ways that aesthetics and objects are tied to intimacy and eros. I thank Datchuk for sharing the porcelain and the hair, the material and the bodily, with us in this long history of exchanging hair.
–Dr. Jarred Wiehe
Watch
MEET Jennifer Ling Datchuk
Listen
Each of these 9 songs stands on its own as a unique jewel - together they unite as an examination of female identity. Listen to these songs while exploring the exhibition Making Women and reflecting on your own identity.
Create
CREATE An IDENTITY INSPIRED WORK OF ART
Read
We aren’t the only art institution fascinated by hair and identity. Check out this project from Ruby City for more:
“Ruby City recognized 53 participants from the local San Antonio community in the form of taking their “hair portrait.” The photographs were taken in a uniform presentation that highlighted the unique qualities of the subjects hair, underlining the diversity within our community”
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