Juliana
Rico

Homecoming

Homecoming is a performance-based project that explores the body as a vessel for a radical self-healing and liberation from systems of oppression.

Over the course of 2020 I grew out all the hair on my body for the first time since puberty. This personal act became a mirror for deep self-confrontation, inviting questions about beauty, self-worth, and whose standards I was living by. Sitting with the discomfort of my own unaltered body allowed me to dismantle the internalized systems of oppression I had long carried. I rejected the messages of patriarchy, white supremacy, anti-fatness, anti-queerness and slowly decolonized my thoughts in relationship to myself, my hair, and my body.

The project culminated on the winter solstice of 2020 at the Joshua Tree, CA desert where I constructed a stage of stone, dirt, and mirrors. I stood nude at center stage and shaved my body ritualistically from the soles of my feet to the top of my crown. I shaved away the hair I had grown, shedding the physical and symbolic weight of imposed identities. As the sun set, I stood bare — both stripped and whole — embracing the raw truth of myself, liberated from the gaze of others.