April Bey, Colonial Day Sale: What Are You Gonna Do, If You Like a Woman and Your Mama No Like Am?, 2020
April Bey transforms the visual language of advertising and high fashion into a meditation on colonialism, Black identity, and cultural reclamation. A regal Black woman, crowned and dressed in vibrant patterns, embodies Bey’s imagined futuristic world of “Colonial Swag.” The distorted crown, appropriated from the haircare brand Royal Crown, reimagines a familiar consumer symbol as a statement of cultural identity and empowerment. Presented as a larger-than-life vinyl billboard, the work challenges the relationship between beauty, consumption, and the histories embedded in commercial imagery.
