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About
Born in 1987 in Los Angeles, California, Halsey produces both standalone artworks and site-specific projects, particularly in the South Central neighbourhood of Los Angeles where her family has lived since the 1920s. Combining found, fabricated, and handmade objects, Halsey’s work maintains a sense of civic urgency and free-flowing imagination, reflecting the lives of the people and places around her and addressing the crucial issues confronting people of colour, queer populations, and the working class. A graduate of UCLA and Yale School of Architecture, Halsey aims to uplift marginalized voices through her work, addressing themes of identity in a direct and bombastic way.
Like Frank Bowling, Halsey uses her work to explore how her personal autobiography connects to wider structures of power, commerce and politics. Untitled, 2022 is a wall based sculpture made of synthetic hair tied in rows, layered one over the other on a wooden back board edged in silver aluminium. Referring to these works as “portals into a funkadelic sphere” Halsey showcases Black hair culture in a fantastical, empowering, and culturally rich manner. Acting like an unruly painting, this work speaks to the medium, disrupting painting's place in the art historical cannon through the lens and materials of contemporary black culture; exposing new and rich connections between these singular expressions of self.
