As a teenager, Laetitia Ky straightened her hair. She wanted to look like the models she saw in magazines, not like the women from her own history. 💇🏿♀️
Years later, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, she began researching how African women styled their hair before colonization. She discovered that every braid, every shape, every knot said something: religion, age, social status, tribe. Hair was not just aesthetics; it was an entire language that had nearly been lost.
Today she uses wire, thread, and her own hands to turn her hair into sculptures that speak about harassment, abortion, racism, and femininity. What she once hid, she now raises like a flag. “Hair was a superpower, and I wanted to reclaim it”, she sums up her story. 🖤
