Ryuan Johnson is a Chicago-based sculptor and creative director whose primary medium is hair. As a young girl, she was introduced to braiding as a means of self care. Self-adornment by way of hair has long been a pinnacle of tending for her family: Like many Black women of her generation, Johnson’s grandmother worked in a hair salon. By the time Johnson got to high school, she began to regard hair not only as a functional and utilitarian means of care-taking, but also as a fundamental mode of self-expression. She realized that her emotional states and mental health were correlated directly to her hair in that she could track the topography of her affective life through the landscape of her scalp. In her own words, “there’s a connection between what’s on my head and what’s in my head. So, sculpting hair allows me to make pieces that are up in the air and avant garde. It represents pride, confidence and culture. Hair that’s in the air is meant to be felt and meant to be seen. Even when I do creative direction for shoots, I think about emotion and I think about hair as a way to communicate that affective universe.” All in all, Johnson’s signature looks take the forms of glimmering chandeliers and sprawling canopies by way of her unique haptic vernacular that considers texture, form, scale, line, color and composition,