An interpretive essay on Michaela Bridgemohan’s embalmed funks, written by Karis Dimas-Lehndorf

”I wash and comb out her hair. She got the nottiest, shortest, kinkiest hair I ever saw, and I loves every strand of it. … I comb and pat, comb and pat. First she say, hurry up and git finish. Then she melt down a little and lean back gainst my knees. That feel just right, she say. That feel like mama used to do. Or maybe not mama. Maybe grandma.”

- The Color Purple by Alice Walker

There’s something about this scene in The Color Purple that always moves me. The intimacy of this moment and the way generations of women are called forth into memory with each pass of the comb. Michaela Bridgemohan’s embalmed funks moves us into another tender space where hair, touch, and ancestral visitation are all entangled. Amani Morrison reminds us that “where there is hair on a head, there will be hands that touch it. Hair, for everyone, involves touching for maintenance and upkeep. In black communities especially, hairstyling is an intimate endeavor.” (88) This tradition and culture that Black folks have developed in relationship to their hair is in many ways a ritual, a spiritual practice that Bridgemohan invokes through pieces like >~~~< (passage, wakes, tears) and the assortment of hair picks.

“The scent of these pieces moves, injects, gathers, and dissipates in a manner that cannot be archived or maintained in conventional ways. In this space, memory moves and is shared by the senses—redolence in its truest form where smell invites association”.

Michaela brings her own diasporic Afro-Carribean heritage forward with such sincerity. The scents in the salves of hair picks also pull from the landscapes of Kelowna. Patchouli, fir, and charcoal mix with black pepper, allspice, and shea butter. Scent mimics self as an olfactory Blackness is brought into this space. This place, as in Kelowna, but also this gallery, into an art world that Hsuan L. Hsu notes is more receptive to synthetic (white) (non)scent than to rich traditional Black smells. Hsu asks if in expanding the space for Black aesthetic practices, especially olfactory art, it is possible “to reshape everyday sensory experiences and environments?” (9) When I spoke to Michaela about embalmed funks, she mentioned hoping to provide a new way of looking at the beloved, familiar, and culturally renowned object – the hair pick. The salves used bring a new form and instill scent into picks, making these objects uniquely ephemeral. The scent of these pieces moves, injects, gathers, and dissipates in a manner that cannot be archived or maintained in conventional ways. In this space, memory moves and is shared by the senses—redolence in its truest form where smell invites association. Each scent, carefully curated and blended, serves as a conduit for ancestral narratives and collective memories, drawing viewers into a rich tapestry of lived experiences and cultural resonances.

*salve table (lotion for your consitution),* Michaela Bridgemohan. Image courtesy of the artist.

Bridgemohan ties her work to the lands of the Syilx Okanagan People as well. By associating polaroids with picks, and flora with funk, a new relationship between these arid lands and a Black practice of care is created. The performance piece tracts, rakes, tines, lake and sleeping grass further explores this connection by engaging directly with the grasses and lands of Cedar Mountain Regional Park. As Michaela combs through the grasses, the Thicc Pick becomes a conduit for dialogue between humans and landscapes, embodying a reverence for the earth and its inhabitants. This tactile interaction with the land honors the ancestral territories of the Syilx Okanagan People, demonstrating a culturally rich practice of land acknowledgment. Both a recognition of what the land has given the artist and what the artist hopes to give back. A gentle combing, imbuing the scalp/soil with what promotes growth.

*embalmed funks* in the Main Gallery, March 15 - April 27, 2024.

The afro-pick serves as a multifaceted emblem of Black cultural heritage, resilience, self-expression, and community care. Bridgemohan’s work often considers the spectral figure of ancestors, asking questions about what is maintained in migration and what is missing. Yet in this collection, through its balms, picks, and pillows, there is a sense that these items have not been left behind so much as they have been passed from one warm hand to the next. Each afro-pick reminiscent of ancestral lands becomes a vessel for the transmission of cultural memory and familial love. These objects, infused with scents transcend their utilitarian function to become vessels of culture and memory. Each chipped tine serves its purpose as a marking for measurement and lineage, a reminder of those who held it before. Like the fingerprints in salve table (lotion for your consitution), they bear witness to a legacy of care. There is an intimacy here that I, as a non-Black Latina, am conscious of. In her essay "Black Hair Haptics: Touch and Transgressing the Black Female Body,” Amani Morrison unpacks the relationship between Black textured hair, and touch. Morrison notes that Black hair “commands attention, especially when there is a lot of it (whether long and straight or full and natural); it takes up space that people do not usually accord to black people, so it is noticeable.” (89) Embalmed funks takes this further, building a space of reverence for Blackness and hair. Situated in a city like Kelowna, where “visible minorities” are truly the minority, Bridgemohan is critical and considerate of the way the Black female body is often viewed in terms of abjection. She challenges us to not only notice but to genuinely sit with our reactions to such rooted Blackness.

“Hair hanging and lingering in our minds as we see pick after pick after pick. She takes that which is detached from the body and reflects its livelihood in memory, asserting its place in the symbolic order”.

These ideas of the monstrous feminine and the abject are some that Michaela works with often. Building off of Julia Kristeva’s original theorizing, Barbara Creed clarifies that the “abject is that which must be expelled or excluded in the construction of that self. In order to enter the symbolic order, the subject must reject or repress all forms of behaviour, speech and modes of being regarded as unacceptable, improper or unclean.” (37) Simplified, this theory suggests that the process by which an individual becomes integrated into the realm of language, culture, and social norms, is dependent on their denial of behaviours and practices that are non-normative. Unsurprisingly, in our current culture, there is the subtext that non-normative is that which is not white or Eurocentric. This is not to say that Black traditions and practices are improper, but rather, that in this exhibition, Bridgemohan pushes back against this kind of racist thinking through hair – hair everywhere. Hair hanging and lingering in our minds as we see pick after pick after pick. She takes that which is detached from the body and reflects its livelihood in memory, asserting its place in the symbolic order. By working with the afro-pick as both a tool for care and a symbol of cultural memory and resilience, Bridgemohan invites viewers to reconsider their relationship to this object and what it reminds us of in the richness of Black experience.

This assertion is then strengthened by the balms and their scents. The mixing of scents is one way that Bridgemohan ties her art to place, but it is also an effective tool for protection and a recalling of Caribbean Hoodoo tradition. As Hsu notes, “Because antiblackness has consigned Black populations to unbreathable and/or noxious atmospheres, Black olfactory projects frequently manifest as everyday practices of resistance and life support.” (Hsu, 13). Bridgemohan's use of scents in her artwork offers a means of reclaiming agency and asserting the vitality of Black lived experiences. In incorporating scents that evoke memories of ancestral lands and cultural traditions, Bridgemohan creates a sensory experience that transcends the confines of the gallery space. The scent-scape that is created is gathered in salves, malleable balms that hold form and hold skin. salve table (lotion for your consitution) reminds us that balms are remedies that must be applied with patience. It takes time to warm between palms, it takes care and intimacy. The moisture then sinks in and is carried with the body as it moves through the world. Bridgemohan’s work asks us consider the body with care and recognize that as a practice of resistance and resilience.

“Bridgemohan's use of scents in her artwork offers a means of reclaiming agency and asserting the vitality of Black lived experiences. In incorporating scents that evoke memories of ancestral lands and cultural traditions, Bridgemohan creates a sensory experience that transcends the confines of the gallery space”.

The interplay of fragrances within embalmed funks is not merely a sensory delight but a profound exploration of the complexities of identity and heritage. Land, culture, ancestors, tradition, touch, and tension are all at play here. Creed writes about this kind of tension, noting that “abjection by its very nature is ambiguous; it both repels and attracts, undermining borders and unsettling identity.” (16) This is reimagined by Bridgemohan as she challenges the border between us and our ancestors, between body and land care, between scent and memory. Let it sink in. Imagine the hand holding the pick, combing the hair – melt down a little.

Karis Dimas-Lehndorf is a mixed-race Latina residing on the stolen, unceded, and ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Holding an M.A. in English, her research interests include Feminist literature, Black Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Popular Culture, and Girlhood studies.

Works Cited

Bridgemohan, Michaela. Embalmed funks, 2024, The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2023. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003006756.

Hsu, Hsuan L. “Olfactory Politics in Black Diasporic Art,” Olfactory Art and the Political in an Age of Resistance, Routledge, pp. 10-21, 2021, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003092711.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of horror: an essay on abjection, Columbia University Press, 1982.

Morrison, Amani. "Black Hair Haptics: Touch and Transgressing the Black Female Body,"

Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, Duke University Press, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 82-96, 2018, Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/706743.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple, Penguin Books, 2019.

Melt Down a Little // Karis Dimas-Lehndorf

“The scent of these pieces moves, injects, gathers, and dissipates in a manner that cannot be archived or maintained in conventional ways. In this space, memory moves and is shared by the senses—redolence in its truest form where smell invites association”.

“Hair hanging and lingering in our minds as we see pick after pick after pick. She takes that which is detached from the body and reflects its livelihood in memory, asserting its place in the symbolic order”.

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art is located on unceded syilx territory.