Traditionally considered, together with costumes, as a vehicle of transformation and metamorphosis, wigs symbolize an act of self-fashioning and self-representation. The wigs in Lorna Simpson’s installation, however, are vacant and oriented away from the viewer, thus obscuring the subject(s) that might wear them. Consequently, the wigs become the sole marker by which a viewer can hypothesize the physical, racial, and sexual identity of the anonymous body. By removing the body, Simpson prompts the viewer to recognize the cultural assumptions implicit in the viewing of various hairstyles, such as those that are braided or woven, as characteristically African American.