The Gallery

My hair elicits a global response. Its reception shifts like dialects do, as slight reinterpretations on a theme.

In Rodez, France, I wore it as a lion does its mane. The stares were unrelenting, as though we were on safari. Ironically, I was in a museum when I first pondered if the Mona Lisa might have chosen a different destiny had Da Vinci asked her preference. In Valletta, Malta, I wore basic cornrows and was assumed to be an African immigrant; pushed, ignored, and scowled at. In Marrakech, it stayed concealed even though it begged me to let it rise with the sun each day. In London, England, I was halted by a constable outside of Buckingham Palace who exclaimed: “Your ‘air is absolutely brilliant!”

Gli italiani.

I touched down and realized that Roma was where I might finally be beautiful. I had been invited to Puglia, Italy to be an artist-in-residence for three weeks, but the truest truth was that I was running away from something, a not-quite-unrequited love. He was intrigued by me; he didn’t choose me. What I knew to be true was that my hair transfixed him; rendered him speechless. I thought he loved me; I knew that he loved my hair.

I deplaned, my heart barely intact, but hopeful that the magnitude of the Colosseum and the Pantheon might eclipse the pain. So, when I stepped into the airport terminal and held every eye at Gate 22, I was both astonished and not. I knew how to wield this hair as a weapon of mass attraction. Each day in Roma, I was accompanied by a symphony of Ciao, bella! (Honorable mention: The man who ran five blocks to catch up to me, to ask: “Can I borrow some of your hairs?”). Each new day brought a new admirer, and my hair purchased the key to whichever neighborhood I called home that day. And yet, it was mostly fetish, gift-wrapped in acclaim. They say:

“It would be my pleasure to walk down the street and to show you off all day.” This man caught my eye in Piazza Navona and implored me (no less than 15 times) to wait just 30 minutes until his shift ended so that he could introduce me to the best pizza e gelato in Roma.

“Deliver free prosecco to la bella donna at table 4.” Every lunch and dinner. Every restaurant. Once, upon not being acknowledged immediately, I panicked. I consulted my pocket mirror, not to behold my face, but to check that my sculpted crown had not melted in Roma’s oppressive June heat. Not to behold my face, but to confirm that I had not abdicated my pedestal in the art gallery.

“You are like the full moon.” Mr. Honorable Mention who invited me on a rendezvous to behold il Vaticano by starlight.

So, I learned to take what I can get; to treat my difference as currency; to be enchanted with others’ enchantment.

Firenze is where it was reinforced that my hair and I could be extricated from one another. I was seated at a cafe, indulging in my third pizza from Dha Gherardo’s that week. I felt ten fingers on my scalp. A young adult passerby, intrigued, decided to engage multiple senses in his experience of my hair. He interrupted his stride in order to interrupt my humanity. I reacted with disdain; I was promptly chastised by a white American bystander who insisted that the young man was just curious.

So, I learn that agency is a myth for some; I learn to be a classroom for others’ ignorance; I learn that I am to be a petting zoo for tactile learners.

Venezia is where I learned that sometimes to be heralded as a museum piece is to be treated as an object; to be picked up and moved at another's whim. Here, I was assailed by a man who first complimented my hair. I responded with gratitude; he invited me to have a drink with him. I declined; he grabbed my hand and attempted (unsuccessfully) to force me to accompany him. In that moment, I learned that my hair can be another’s muse, but not a helmet for me. The scarlet letter that I wear is also an “A,” but mine is for audacity, as I dared to believe that I could be both luminous and indomitable. Venezia’s technicolor backdrop fades and I spend the rest of my trip hidden beneath hats. My hair protests the suffocation.

So I learn to be hypervigilant; to hide in plain sight; to remain in constant motion so as not to be mistaken for a prize that can be acquired at auction and placed in a stranger’s foyer. I learn that I am valuable beyond measure and also, a trifle.

Puglia is where I learned that gli americani believe that they know my story better than I. I was to spend three weeks as an artist-in-residence, among the olive groves, at an alluring masseria with eleven Americans. I should have been the twelfth American and yet, Puglia was where I discovered that my Americanness was conditional.

I was prepared to explain myself to the Italians. I had rehearsed the language I would use were I to be asked about my hair. I was wholly unprepared to explain myself to my countrymen. And I was wholly unprepared to receive the reality that they did not ask me to explain myself. Gli italiani were intrigued, at least. Gli americani were not.

The first instance of assumption surfaced on a day trip for a boating adventure. In passing, I mentioned that I was looking forward to the experience but that I would not be swimming. It was like the needle being lifted off the record, mid-song. I received a barrage of judgments and expectations disguised as questions. My relationship with water runs parallel to my Black experience and I had genuine questions for myself: Who will do my hair after this adventure? Will I be beautiful then? So, I only dipped my toes in.

The final instance of assumed understanding surfaced at our residency’s last supper. There were no concerned inquiries as to who would be the one to betray me that evening. We were doing final presentations and one of the participants — a white woman — showed a documentary she had produced about Black hair. As was customary, at the end of each week, residents could elect to showcase past or current work for feedback and for witnessing. Just one week prior, I shared a song-in-progress with the group dedicated to Nina Simone; its refrain mourning the fall from grace she sustained for requiring Americans to hear the truth about themselves.

Today the one

Tomorrow unwelcome

Today, the one

Tomorrow unsung

Black is the color of my people’s

Name

Pain

This piece, Unsung, received high praise for its ability to awaken empathy in its audience. The following week, in discussion of the documentary, gli americani had seemingly lost track of the empathy accessed. Perhaps it had been washed away on our boating adventure baptism. One white woman remarked—“I just don’t understand at what point Black hair stopped being considered beautiful…”

The creator of the documentary countered the statement and posited that Black hair has never been considered beautiful by the American mainstream. The first woman doubled down. She offered up the Civil Rights Movement and how everyone, not just Black people she made it appoint to highlight, marched to ensure that all could be considered equal. I watched this scene from above, like a celestial tennis match. With each volley, I felt myself ascending ever higher; becoming increasingly distant.

And then, a divine knowing. This was an intellectual conversation for them on a theme that was a deeply emotional lived experience for me. The distance between the two could not be more vast. It reminded me of the two small children I watched race through the Galleria della’Accademia, narrowly missing the pedestals upon which ancient busts were perched. For all intents and purposes, I was not even in the same room as these women. No matter how much space my hair occupied, no matter how elegantly it defied gravity, no matter that the story being told was much more mine than theirs, I was not understood to be an expert. I was yet another fixture to behold and then to saunter past in the exhibition hall of that exchange.

It can be assumed that your proximity with another correlates with your understanding of their plight. This is untrue. In the five weeks that I spent in Italy, I felt least seen when in residence with gli americani. Not because they refused to see me. They saw me, but they held no genuine curiosity about me. They assumed they knew all there was to know. They perceived me and then they placed me in my designated domain upon the gallery wall.

So, I learn to fade into the background. To listen to others theorize the story of my lineage. To disengage because no matter my volume or my fervor, they do not hear.

By the time I arrive home, my hair has undergone its own metamorphosis. Departure: It began as a voluminous work of art, hewn from obsidian. It moved with liberation, it played tag with the wind, it swayed as I stepped, it captured sunlight and refracted it in all directions. Return: It concludes as an oracle’s orb. It is unshakeable; dense from absorption; understated; anti-performance. Exhausted.

I touch down and remember that home is where I question whether I am beautiful. I deplane, my heart hopeful, certain that in my time away gli americani will have learned to no longer underestimate my glory. I step into the terminal and...I step into the terminal. I am fundamentally different, but they believe they’ve seen me before. And what you see is what you get. What else is there to know?

RachelSimone Wyley is the Founder and CEO of Culture Kinesis, an organization dedicated to establishing sustainable countercultures that upend the status quo by: reimagining antiquated organizational systems and structures, cultivating authentic leadership for disempowered folks, and co-creating and installing racial equity-based foundations. She activates the qualities of empathy and vulnerability to connect individuals in spontaneous community, and then, guides them through a process of critical unlearning, radical re-education, and ultimately, reimagination of society. She is above all an artist - a vocalist, a poet-songwriter, and a nonfiction essayist - and understands art to be the solution to racial inequity, not simply its mirror and megaphone.