Hijabs & Hoodies

In collaboration with Studio Revolt, Tracey Keza is working to bring Hijabs & Hoodies - an on-going portrait series for cities that have a history of racial profiling, hate crimes, and violence targeted towards the POC and Muslim communities.

Tracey believes that art-making is a collaborative process and every portrait participant becomes a critical collaborator offering their stories, opinions, tears, family histories and ultimately their faces to my project.

Her black and white portraits are exhibited as giant murals– enormous faces with an unavoidable sense of visibility and presence. I believe that stripping my work of colour allows me to focus more keenly on each participant’s humanity and dignity.

This way, Keza allows the viewer to encounter the faces and fabrics that draw a range of emotional reactions - depending on who views them. The larger-than life portraits demand the viewer’s gaze and attention.

"My goal is to humanize people impacted by a broken system that continues to disenfranchise and disembody Black and Brown people." - Tracey Keza

"Racial profiling and state sanctioned violence against Black and Brown bodies have always existed in America, but recently these brutalities have been made even more visible through widely shared digital recordings and a political climate" - Tracey Keza