I recently ran into an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a while. I had just gotten box braids (a kind of long-lasting Black hairstyle that involves braiding extensions into the person's hair). For the first few seconds, he didn’t recognize me—my hair had transformed me into someone else, something else. While latent racism is probably also a culprit here, my braids were a technology that allowed me to become and inhabit another being. Alisa Sikelianos-Carter’s exhibition at Wa Na Wari, a home gallery dedicated to Black artists in the historically Black Central District, explores this technology, braids. Juxtaposing pictures of cornrows, Senegalese twists, box braids, locs, etc. with organic and abstract-looking shapes, Sikelianos-Carter pays homage to and creates a new paradigm through which we can look at and appreciate Black hair. by Jas Keimig