“As I braided, I thought about the labour I was doing and how it connected to women through the generations and across the world. I thought about the intersectionality that this part of my body represented – not just gender, but race, class, health, sexuality, age – and how hair is so diversely symbolic in human society.”
Diane Connors. Biography, Entanglement by Diane Connors. The Drawing Room Edmonton. January 20th, 2016.
Entanglement is a provocative example of how one women’s literal attempt to disconnect from the weight of feminine expectation joined her enduringly to a vast history of traditional feminine performativity and labour. More than just a haircut, her decision to sever long locks politically disembodied her appearance from the archetype of the conventionally beautiful and passive woman, but her decision to keep the locks, and their future as a medium for her own artistic production, weaves a nuanced story.
Diane connected with a skilled spinner to learn how to turn raw hair into usable fibers she then braided, crocheted and weaved into pieces for Entanglement, an out of body experience that grafted her into a global guild of traditional hand workers—one catalytic act of disconnection bursting into a dense, loaded history of female labour, artisanship, generational knowledge dissemination and “women’s work” would leave her resonating with attachments. She was entangled and is Entanglement.
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Diane Connors is the Communications Director for Impact Organizations of Nova Scotia. She is a climate activist, writer, and leader in community development.
She discusses ecofeminism and related topics to her work on Terra Informa, a production of CJSR 88.5FM: Episode 04/18/2016.
Butterfly Press 
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