Joanne Petit-Frère: Black Braid Brocade

Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new braided sculptures, photographs and video by Joanne Petit-Frère. The on-line project is the first at the gallery by the Queens, NY based artist. 

Joanne Petit-Frère’s new body of work - loosely entitled "Braid.Cora Quarantina” - includes video, iPhone shots, camera-less photographs and hair-braided sculpture. Made during quarantine, Petit-Frère’s new pieces contrast studio practice against public performance. Petit-Frère’s works take on public and private. They negotiate appearance and identity as experienced by the self, and consumed by others. They experiment with iPhone imagery in archiving the dissonance and exploration of hand-practice, from manual to autonomous, and track the movement between braiding, hand sewing, drafting, Polaroid, digital and scanning.

At a moment in which human touch and presence in society is increasingly charged, Petit-Frère's artwork reveals human beauty and form, the shifting currents of social dialogue, and the body as a site of beauty and adornment. Petit-Frère enlists performance as a means by which to think about the body. A staple of the underground conceptual hair scene in New York for more than a decade, Petit-Frère long thought about their work in the context of transformation, and participated in such storied events as "Hair Wars" at MoMA PS1 (2018, New York, NY). 

Petit-Frère's latest works like "Tapestry of Braids #1 (Woven while discovering bell hooks on YouTube)" (2020) demonstrate their alignment of their own practice, one rooted in the vernacular of the braid salon, with cultural theory and fine art practices. In negotiating these intellectual silos, Petit-Frère offers profound routes towards thinking about who we are and what we can be. Petit-Frère offers routes to broaden our understanding, and in so doing, asks us to consider the art object as an active, not passive, tool in advancing how we think about things.

Joanne Petit-Frère (b. 1987, New York, NY) received a BA from the Fashion Institute of Technology (New York, NY). Petit-Frère's work was recently included in "A Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes" at the Museum of Pop Culture (Seattle, WA) and “This Synthetic Moment (Replicant)," curated by David Hartt at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). Petit-Frère's work has been included in performances and exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (New York, NY); New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans, LA); and The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA). Petit-Frère has created custom hair sculptures for Beyoncé, Solange Knowles, Les Nubians, and Janelle Monáe, among others. Joanne Petit-Frère work has been featured in publications such as "Vogue," "Vogue Italia," "Vogue Japan," "The New Yorker," "The Evening Standard," "AnOther Magazine," and "Cultured Magazine." Joanne Petit-Frère lives and works in New York, NY.