Afro-Dite: HairLoom took place in January 2019 inside the exhibition, Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires on Level 5 of the Vivian & David Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art at the AGO. Conceived as a contemplation of black beauty, the event was inspired by the artist's childhood experience of wearing large braids to school and being different from her mostly Caucasian schoolmates. In this iteration of the piece, artist Nikola Steer invited her mother (and others) to rebraid her hair, weaving in textures and textiles of autobiographical, cultural and ethnic significance. This culminated in a dance of defiance, set to a soundscape of the stories collected in moving tribute to her lineage and community.

Following the performance, Bojana Stancic, AGO Assistant Curator Live Projects & Performance, will lead a conversation with the artist as they explore the legacy of this work and its current reverberations.
. . .

Coco Framboise (Nikola Steer) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and curator based in Toronto.She has spent 17 years as a world-touring burlesque headliner, and is known for poignant performances that take audiences on a thrill ride from the saucy to the surreal to the sublime. In addition to burlesque, she creates work in a variety of forms including dance, photography, film, writing, visual art, and performance art. Recently, with the support of Canada Council for the Arts she concluded her initial research period at Gallery Labatt and produced a multimedia installation,The Ghost Apartment. She continues to generate new work apace as Coco Paradise, an invented identify that she defines as a "futuristic performance art avatar".