Talley Dunn Gallery | VICKI MEEK |

Dallas Art Exhibition
Talley Dunn Gallery
5020 TRACY STREET DALLAS, TEXAS 75205

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04/23/22-07/02/22

Talley Dunn Gallery
April 23 – July 2, 2022

Talley Dunn Gallery is immensely honored to announce a solo exhibition of renowned and nationally recognized artist Vicki Meek. The artist’s inaugural exhibition at the gallery, At What Point Do We Disappear? Black Women’s Obsession with White Femininity, will be on view April 23 – July 2, 2022, with an open house and artist reception April 23.

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Vicki Meek, At What Point Do We Disappear? Black Women’s Obsession with White Femininity, 2022, Installation view, Talley Dunn Gallery
Artist Statement:

This exhibition stems from an idea I’ve been mulling around in my head for decades. I think it started in the late 1980s when I was asked by a Black woman, upon noticing that I wore my hair natural, “Are you still wearing an Afro? Didn’t that go out with the 70s?” I explained to her that my natural hair wasn’t a fad statement but a full embracing of my natural self. It was at that point that I realized the whole concept of Black beauty that had seen a momentary shift to an African aesthetic, was more a fad for so many Black women, a style to be switched up when Black is Beautiful ran its course and we shifted back to an aesthetic rooted in Eurocentricity.

Skin bleaching, hair straightening, eye and body altering all have provided tangible examples of the erasure of Blackness from our concept of beauty. Not surprisingly, 400 years of cultural indoctrination has taken its toll on concepts of beauty in the Black community. The proximity to whiteness has become the gold standard in determining beauty, so Black women have been chasing that standard in a myriad of ways for generations. Enslavement and colonization produced a culture of self-hate that often manifests in ways sometimes not even perceptible by the Black community.

I am exploring in At What Point Do We Disappear: Black Women’s Obsession with White Femininity how deeply ingrained this self-hate is, not only here in America, but also in Africa where women sport long, straight haired wigs and bleach their skin in attempts to “lighten up” their complexion so that they can be more appealing to African men. This fascination with whiteness extends beyond simply skin color and hair texture. It manifests in obsessions with light colored eyes, thin bodies, as well as altered noses and lips.