A queue of people formed on the staircase leading into The True Space, the upstairs gallery in First Hill’s Museum of Museums (MoM), for the public opening of its fall exhibit. The line out the gallery’s front door continued to grow throughout the night. Everyone was waiting patiently to get into this season’s centerpiece installation — “GUM BABY” — by local art powerhouse Tariqa Waters.
Waters explores Black identity, culture and consumerism through quirky and colorful paintings and installations. Since her move to Seattle in 2012, the artist and curator’s projects, such as her Pioneer Square gallery space Martyr Sauce Pop Art Museum, have been welcomed and applauded by critics. But her work is not without controversy. “GUM BABY” marks a return to curatorial work from Waters for an outside institution after “Yellow No. 5.," which ended with a public apology from Bellevue Arts Museum to Waters and the resignation of its then director.
Like “Yellow No. 5,” “GUM BABY” leans into the double-entendre nature of Waters’ larger-than-life aesthetic.
Before getting to the heart of “GUM BABY,” you have to take your shoes off. A simple task, but one that partially explains the long line that started at the top of stairs and led out the entrance. Once the shoes are off, a MoM staff person lets clusters of three people at a time through a door with a portrait of Waters sitting on a large “NO” atop a pile of double-ball hair ties. The portrait hints at what’s behind the door it hangs on — double-ball hair ties, and lots of them. Yes, those colorful, bobble-like hair ties of ’90s nostalgia used to hold pigtails and braids in place.
Stepping into Waters’ installation is a bit like walking into a Dr. Seuss book but more neon. Colorful yoga-ball-sized spheres covered in fur scattered around the installation are reminiscent of the Truffula trees from “The Lorax.” Tranquil sounds of animals at sundown, such as birds and crickets, fit the dimmed-down mood of the environment. The metallic, iridescent floor resembles still water, and a path of green shag carpet mimics grass. Meanwhile, signs guide you through the wonderland of pink hills; “STAY ON PATH!” one urges.
All along the installation are giant, double-ball hair ties made out of glass. Seven of these fragile, coconut-sized ball barrettes hang from the ceiling, and a handful are scattered along the floor. A sign near one of the glass sculptures tells patrons “DO NOT DARE TOUCH.”
This warning is a common etiquette known and mostly respected in the art and museum world but ironically not so much when it comes to Black women’s hair, which in particular is politicized, discriminated against, touched without consent and often appropriated.
With “GUM BABY,” Waters, who herself wears her turquoise hair in a variety of styles, creates a setting, albeit small, where a common-sense courtesy is plainly laid out without protest.
The glass hair ties capture the fragility and innocence of childhood hair memorabilia, left untouched and uncorrupted by the racist reality of society.
Exiting this dream world, visitors discover a dark room, where three more ball barrettes are presented, two of them creaking as they rotate on platforms. Two portraits of Waters, posing on cars at a beach, hover above the glass sculptures.
And then, a giant pink vintage television — the final immersive element of the installation — can be found beyond a small door one must crouch under to get through.
The TV broadcasts short clips edited together of old commercials and programming, some real and others made by Waters herself. Ads for Afro Sheen hair products and the Golden Dream Barbie are interspersed with cuts of Waters making Jiffy cornbread and proudly declaring, “You know I can throw down in the kitchen.” There’s also the independent little Black girl running errands for her mom from Sesame Street’s “I Can Remember” skit, followed by Waters promoting her favorite soap, Zest.
It’s a fitting way to end the immersive installation, a call to Waters’ own passion for pop culture, born from vintage-era television sitcoms like 1968’s “Julia.” The giant pink television demands attention, and the short advertorial loop makes you question who gets to create the feelings of nostalgia behind culture-defining products. Once again, Waters subverts and elevates the mythos that fuels consumerism and Black memorabilia.
These themes of memory, autonomy, consumerism and culture go beyond the “GUM BABY” exhibit.
In the Malone Gallery, an international group exhibition called “Hollaback to the Future,” curated by Moses Sun, takes a look at contemporary art that fits within the ideas of Afrofuturism. A small room turned into “The Time Flow Healer’s Room” by Zahyr Lauren and Joel offers centerpiece seats surrounded by calming blue spirograph-like patterns that are echoed on the walls. Minimalist, multidimensional graffiti by Seattle street artist Sneke One honors their graffiti roots while pushing the aesthetic somewhere new. The exhibit also features shoes by Shu Jones, a former Reebok apprentice who during a turbulent time in his life tore apart and redesigned shoes to look like fashion from a post-apocalyptic future.
More shoes make an appearance in The Emergence Room, its wall covered in art by young artists aged six to 16. Marker and color pencil drawings of the “Right Shoes” show the varied view on what exactly that may be: ballerina pointe shoes, high heels and, of course, plenty of Nikes and Converse.
This fall, MoM also acquired a new small art space to accompany the Supperfield Museum of Contemporary Art (which houses, among many cool art pieces, a neon light installation called “Spiral Wormhole”). The inaugural exhibit inside of Locker #141 is tiny, the size of a small, cube gym locker. Designed by Catherine Croft, “The Crawler’s Museum” looks like a little forest cantina for bugs — complete with a beetle and other insects hanging around the moss-covered cube.
All of Museum of Museum’s fall exhibits, including “GUM BABY,” will run through Dec. 31.
Read more of the Oct. 19-25, 2022 issue.