The UC Santa Cruz Arts Research Institute (ARI) recently announced the winners of the 2021 Individual and Collaborative Major Awards. These highly competitive grants support projects that will enhance the national and international prominence of the arts at UCSC and increase the quality and vitality of research or creative work in theory, scholarship, and/or practice in the arts.
Please join us in congratulating A.M. Darke (Assistant Professor DANM/AGPM/CRES) who was recognized for her work “Open Source Afro Hair Library”!
Existing 3D marketplaces are lacking in Black representation. It is difficult to find any accurate depictions of Black hair, much less any diverse range, while Blackness more broadly is depicted through a lens of misogyny and racial caricature evocative of Jim Crow era minstrelsy. The Open Source Afro Hair Library (OSAHL), a feminist, anti-racist database for 3D models of Black hair textures and styles, offers a counter-narrative: a powerful, pro-Black vision for Black virtuality.
