Secret Pathways to Freedom. Installation view, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2022. Photo by David Stjernholm

Secret Pathways to Freedom, 2022.

Made of braided, synthetic hair and various charms, this work was created in collaboration with African American artist Halima Cassells and local residents from Detroit. In several works, Jeannette Ehlers uses hair as an important identity marker within the African diaspora. She has engaged with colonial-era repression mechanisms that continue to influence people of African descent.

Similarly, she has worked with the Afro as a recurring symbol of liberation within Black counterculture, especially as promoted by the Pan-African civil rights movements of the 1960s. In Secret Pathways to Freedom, the many palms and fingers that have braided the hair are an important albeit invisible part of the work. Hanging like a heavy curtain, the braids might hide a secret door that, as the title indicates, may be a gateway to freedom. However, the idea of freedom is also expressed through the specific handiwork carried out by the braiders, and in the meetings between them, giving rise to new communities.