Artist Deana Lawson uses beauty supply store surveillance images to analyze power and personhood in her exhibition at the Gagosian in New York City<\/p>\n
In her essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, writer and philosopher bell hooks explains that the relationship between Black people and the act of \u201clooking\u201d has been traumatic since slavery. Black people, many of whom are still subject to the constant surveillance that originated during enslavement, have historically been punished with severe consequences, such as lynching, for looking back at those who subjugate them. Despite these risks, hooks writes, they rebelled by secretly looking at white people, as well as their surroundings, rejecting the white gaze as the singular framework of reality. We can, as bell hooks writes, \u201cinterrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see\u201d.<\/p>\n
I thought of this analysis when I visited Edge Control, artist Deana Lawson\u2019s latest photography exhibition at the Gagosian gallery in New York City. Edge control refers to the gels and pomades that slick the hairs along the edges of a Black woman\u2019s hairline, but in Lawson\u2019s exhibit, the phrase takes on an additional meaning. It\u2019s at once a styling product for Black haircare devotees as well as a tool to examine the beauty industry, consumerism and how surveillance and race intersect.<\/p>\n
Edge Control is on view at the Gagosian in New York City until 24 October<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/9e02f686a51863033357db94172920daaf84c8b0\/0_160_2400_1919\/master\/2400.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=d2c86339d6419ac8f75c7853a83859a6\" "\\"Edge")
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