Seran Francis

Hair pot series

Handbuilt carved oxide washed stoneware pot with artificial hair. 35cm high.

In the Clouds

Oak framed digital print 44.4 x 62.4cm

Seran Francis is a black-British multidisciplinary artist living in Plymouth. Her work consists of creating digitally manipulated Afro-surrealist inspired images using a range of mediums, merging photography with ceramics and hair.

Hair is power, the external expression of self. In this collection Seran focuses on representing afro textured hair while exploring the mess surrounding empowerment, consciousness and representation. In a world that still overwhelmingly favours eurocentric standards, hair has been used to defy; becoming charged with political standing, dividing or uniting. The embedded historical connection between hair, culture and identity, resulted in the artist questioning, ‘Can black people's hair ever be seen as just hair’? Seran has taken the traditional crafts of braiding and weaving into the modern era using photo manipulation and sculpture to capture versions of blackness, composing digital images that reveal the positive and negative effects of using hair as affirmation, in the hope of rejecting stereotypical roles of existence in favour of a new uplifting definition of what black is and can be.

Instagram: seran_asta