Current Exhibition

Sticks & Stones

10/02/2025 - 11/12/2025

Sticks and Stones takes its name from the rhyme many of us learned as children: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It was meant to make us resilient, but the truth is that words can cut far deeper than any weapon, leaving wounds that shape how we see ourselves. For many Black children, some of the earliest painful words came casually, wrapped in comments about acceptability: how our hair should be worn, what textures were “good,” and what was considered “too much.” These words clung to us longer than playground teasing and often became quiet weights carried into adulthood. In this duo exhibition, Christina Wong and Veronica Dorsett reconstruct these fragments of memory, peeling back the layers of beauty culture and generational expectation to create space for tenderness and honesty.

Wong’s series, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, is titled after a biblical phrase that speaks of the sacred and complex beauty of The Divine’s greatest creation, humanity. Each work transforms the hurtful words many of us heard growing up into affirmations of truth and pride. Rather than carrying the scars of comments like “your hair is too nappy” or “you’d look better with it straightened,” the titles uplift: “I love my nappy hair,” “My coils carry strength.” These declarations celebrate beauty as it is, without apology. Wong grew up with a mother who practiced cosmetology; salons were filled with the smell of chemicals, hot irons, and perfumes. They were places of community, laughter, and transformation, yet also spaces where certain ideals of beauty standards were reinforced, carrying pride and pressure

Dorsett’s works look inward to childhood in The Bahamas, where hair stores and perm boxes became markers of cultural aspiration and longing. Her figures radiate confidence and joy while interacting with nostalgic products, yet they also carry a quiet critique. Words like “soft & beautiful” are lifted from relaxer packaging and paired with natural hair, reversing the narrative that “softness” requires alteration and challenging the narrative that our natural hair is hard or unmanageable. She remembers being mesmerized by the girls on those boxes: smooth, shiny, tamed, only to later embrace an afro that defies gravity, knowing now that softness, beauty, and power were always there.

Together, their works honor the community that taught them how to survive in a world that rarely saw their beauty, while challenging the beliefs we once held as truth. We are beautiful. With each curl and kink, relaxed or natural, we are all made unique. The tones of our complexions, the various curves and dimples make us “reverently and exquisitely fashioned.” In claiming that truth, while having hard conversations, we not only honor ourselves, but we also free the next generation to carry their crowns with pride, unburdened by the words that once weighed us down. The intention of this exhibition is to embolden us, to live honestly, to love ourselves deeply, and to walk proudly in our unique beauty.