Dorian Welbourn is a sculptural printmaker, combining screen printing with crafts such as sewing and hair braiding. Creating stencils using wefts of human hair purchased online, she prints on various substrates, such as frosted mylar and upcycled Amazon envelopes, with brightly coloured acrylic ink for an overall plastic aesthetic.
She cuts and layers the prints, which she then sews to braided synthetic hair. The braids are attached a frame or other support, which is installed on the wall. Welbourn chooses supports that are geometric in shape, to both complement and frame the flowing, organic shapes created by the cutting and layering of prints. Welbourn’s art pushes forward ideas surrounding contemporary beauty culture, such as social media promoting unrealistic images and beauty goals, and the continual effort to push the boundaries and move further away from so-called natural beauty, to create the next Instagram trend or cultural hair fad. Through a lens of feminism, Welbourn looks at the duality of hair as both a form of limitless self-expression, and as a tool of oppression through the rigid societal beauty standards. Drawing on her own professional experience in the hair industry, Welbourn adapts the laborious processes involved in cutting and styling hair to create her working methods. To complete each work, once installed, she continues to cut away at the prints, creating more layers and revealing more depth. This final process is intuitive, contrasting with the rules she follows in each preceding step of the process. |