Deana Lawson Explores Surveillance and Race in Edge Control at Gagosian

Artist Deana Lawson is examining power, personhood, and surveillance through the lens of beauty supply store security footage in her latest exhibition at the Gagosian in New York City.

The Intersection of Surveillance and Race in Edge Control

The exhibition takes its name from edge control, the gels and pomades used to slick down baby hairs along a Black woman’s hairline. Within Lawson’s gallery installation, the term expands to interrogate the broader beauty industry and the mechanics of modern surveillance. The Guardian reported that the artist utilizes security camera images sourced directly from beauty supply stores to build her analysis.

This visual investigation connects to a long history of scrutinized public presence for Black individuals. Writer and philosopher bell hooks observed in her essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators that the act of looking has carried severe risks since the era of enslavement. While surveillance systems have evolved from historical subjugation into modern retail security, the underlying dynamics of being watched persist.

Historical Precedents and the Oppositional Gaze

Enslaved Black people faced extreme physical punishment, including lynching, for looking directly at those who subjugated them. Despite these dangers, individuals developed a clandestine counter-gaze, quietly observing their surroundings and rejecting a singular white framework of reality. Lawson’s photography builds on this framework by turning the mechanics of observation back onto the spaces that monitor marginalized consumers.

By capturing the quiet moments within retail spaces through a surveillance lens, the exhibition forces viewers to confront how consumer environments operate as sites of continuous monitoring. The works invite audiences to interrogate the gaze of authority while reclaiming the ability to look back and document shared reality.

Exhibition Dates and Gallery Details

Edge Control remains open to the public at the Gagosian gallery in New York City.