Event Details
Event Title Exhibition Opening: Reverence: Hair Memory Through Images by Durham-based Artist Jamaica Gilmer
Location Sonja H Stone Center's Brown Gallery and Museum - 150 South Road, Chapel Hill NC 27599
Sponsor Sonja H Stone Center
Date/Time 09/24/2026 - 10/29/2026
For more information, contact the event administrator: Sheriff Drammeh sheriff7@email.unc.edu
Session Status Session Session Date Start Time End Time Cutoff
Expired Exhibition Opening: Hair Memory Through Images featuring Durham-based Artist Jamaica Gilmer 09/24/2026 6:30 PM 7:30 PM none
Registering Jamaica Gilmer in Conversation with Dr. Jasmine Cobb 10/29/2026 none
 
Reverence: Hair Memory Through Images by Jamaica Gilmer is a photographic testament to Black hair. Here, stylists and barbers become the hair artists, and the Black people who sit in their chairs become the muse. This exhibition celebrates the long-held tradition of being immersed in images while you wait for your turn in the chair. Look-books filled with style options, walls adorned with even more—our global histories presented as sacred exhibitions in everyday spaces.

Jamaica Gilmer is a relentless hope-architect, multifaceted artist, and curator working across photography, ceramics, and film. Her most recent series, We are the Sun: A Photographic Tribute to Black Community, celebrates the intergenerational wisdom of ThirdSpace Action Lab in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the founder of The Beautiful Project (TBP) and the lead curator of TBP’s past exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Uris Center for Education, Pen, Lens, and Soul: The Story of The Beautiful Project. Her work is featured in Kleaver Cruz’s recent book, The Black Joy Project: A Literary and Visual Love Letter to How We Thrive. At the core of her organizing practice, Jamaica is committed to telling sacred stories of possibility through interdisciplinary making. You can read more about the artist: www.jamaicagilmer.com. 


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Dialogue moderated by Dr. LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant, Director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center featuring Jamaica Gilmer, Artist/Curator of Reverence and Dr. Jasmine Cobb, author of New Growth, The Art and Texture of Black Hair. 

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is a visual and cultural historian. She is the Earl D. McLean Jr. Professor of African & African American Studies and Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University.

A fellow of the National Humanities Center, Cobb is the author of three books including Picture Freedom:  Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (NYUP 2015), African American Literature in Transition, 1800-1830 (Cambridge UP 2021) which is an edited volume; and most recently, New Growth:  The Art and Texture of Black Hair (Duke UP 2022). 

In addition to scholarly essays for Public Culture and American Literary History, her media appearances include, ABC news, the Tavis Smiley Show, Essence magazine, the Boston Globe’s Emancipator, the Philadelphia Inquirer and “Left of Black.” Currently, Cobb is at work on The Pictorial Life of Harriet Tubman, a visual history of the abolitionist, from the middle nineteenth century through the present. She earned a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and presently resides in North Carolina. Learn More at: https://www.jasminecobb.com .