These contradictory ideals left Grandison with a complex relationship with her own hair, an awareness that “my hair must have been different to ‘normal’ in some way. For years I’d either scrape it back or straighten it, but never relaxed it as I was fortunate enough to have parents who told me that one day I would learn to appreciate what I have.”

To create her handcrafted collages, Grandison draws on a wide range of source material, adapting imagery from hair salon packaging, black hair magazines and photography books such as Hairstyles, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere‘s seminal photo series which sought to document the intricate hairstyles worn by African women throughout the 20th century. By merging imagery of African and European hair styling, Grandison’s work comments on the Western hair industry’s appropriation of black beauty ideals and vice versa. “it’s interesting to find similarities between the two – both constantly imitate and borrow from one another. The white hair industry is constantly ‘borrowing’ (or appropriating) traditional black hairstyles: dreadlocks, intricate braiding… But on the other hand you go into a black hair shop and I would say the majority of the hair you can buy is straight/European in texture.”