Diana Ross (1944- ) will mainly be recalled as lead of arguably the most successful girl group historically, The Supremes, and thus one of the strongest associations with the ‘Motown sound.’
She left the trio in1970 to embark on a successful solo career which lasted decades. In this period following her departure, she appropriated for her look popular signifiers of black culture and liberation of the late 1960s to early 1970s; which represented power and pride, heritage and nature. Concurrently the hippie movement, spurred by the ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967, was also at the forefront with a broad philosophy of freedom.
The irony was that even though she was black and no doubt still faced racism and misogyny on a regular basis, she was by this time already a beautiful, wealthy and privileged celebrity. So for all intents and purposes her use of the afro was primarily fashion; more so than actual alignment with any activism or movement of the time.
Taking this into account I used as a basis an iconic portrait from the ‘Surrender’ album period. What I immediately saw in it was a tree; so I recreated Diana as a trunk, her hair now a cornucopia of ornithological and entomological elements; its canopy teeming with natural life.
