Braiding the Lineage

On a quiet morning in Almada’s Feijo district, the scent of castor oil and hair sheen spray drifts from an unmarked salon tucked behind a Cape Verdean café. Inside, a woman sits in a cracked leather chair as another weaves intricate cornrows into her scalp. A small TV hums in the corner with a telenovela no one is watching. The real story is being told in the rhythm of fingers, the pain of parting, the intimacy of scalp and hand.

In salons like this—whether in Luanda’s chaotic São Paulo district or Lisbon’s peripheries—Black hair care becomes something more than a service. It’s a ritual. A form of unspoken communication. A cartography of survival. A living, breathing map of identity.

The Scalp as Political Territory

Hair, in African and Afro-diasporic cultures, has always been more than adornment. It is a repository of history, a medium of expression, and in many cases, a form of silent resistance. Before and during the transatlantic slave trade, hairstyles often indicated tribal affiliation, marital status, spiritual beliefs—or escape plans. In colonial and postcolonial contexts, these same styles were suppressed or re-coded as primitive, disorderly, or unprofessional.

The South African visual activist Zanele Muholi, known for their powerful self-portraiture in Somnyama Ngonyama (2014–), frequently invokes hair as a politicized material. In one image, Zibuyile I (Parktown), their head is adorned with scouring pads twisted into braids—a fierce reclaiming of domestic labor and Black aesthetics. As Muholi writes:

“My practice as a visual activist looks at Black resistance—existence as the ultimate form of resistance.”

The tension between visibility and erasure echoes across Lusophone countries where Afro-textured hair still disrupts social norms. In Portugal, multiple cases have emerged in recent years of Black students being told their hair was "inappropriate" for school photos or exams. Meanwhile, in Angola, advertisements for hair relaxers and European-style wigs dominate the streets of Luanda, reinforcing a hierarchy of texture deeply tied to colonial legacy.

Lusophone Aesthetics of Control

The contradiction is stark: in nations with large Black populations—Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau—European beauty standards persist. In Portugal, which once colonized them all, the ghosts of racial hierarchies remain coded in appearance. Sociologist Neusa Santos Souza, in her seminal book Tornar-se Negro (1983), argues that Black Brazilians internalize Eurocentric norms, a phenomenon she calls “epidermic logic.” Hair, often the first visible marker of Blackness, becomes a battleground.

In Lisbon’s suburb of Chelas, informal salons run by Angolan and São Toméan women offer refuge. These are not slick, branded studios, but community hubs with second-hand chairs and home-mixed oils. Clients come not only for box braids or dreadlock maintenance but for kinship—speaking Creole, sharing immigration advice, or venting about racism at work.

Performance artist Juliana dos Santos, who frequently works between Brazil and Portugal, has created powerful pieces involving the act of hair braiding as public ritual. In Cabelo Bom (2018), she invites viewers to participate in detangling and braiding her hair as she narrates the histories of Afro-Brazilian resistance. In an interview with Afropunk, she said:

“The body—our Black bodies—are archives. And hair is one of the strongest parts of that archive. Every time we braid, we are reweaving something that they tried to erase.”

The Diaspora Salon as Archive

Afro hair salons across the Lusophone world function as living archives. They contain intergenerational wisdom, local gossip, unspoken trauma, and evolving trends. The salon is where girls first learn to sit still through pain. Where mothers teach daughters how to stretch, oil, wrap, protect. Where migrants exchange information on work permits and landlords.

These salons often exist at the edge of legality—unlicensed, cash-based, improvised. Yet their presence shapes urban life in profound ways. In Luanda, the zungueiras (female street vendors) frequently multitask—selling braiding services alongside vegetables or SIM cards. In Lisbon, Cape Verdean stylists often braid from their apartments, their kitchens turned into makeshift studios.

The Angolan anthropologist Isabel Castro Henriques has described such informal networks as “spaces of resistance and knowledge circulation”, especially among African women in post-migration settings.

Texture, Market, and the Commodification Trap

The global rise in interest in Afro hair—its aesthetics, care routines, and cultural capital—has also opened the door to appropriation. On TikTok and Instagram, braided styles often trend without credit to their Black origins. Influencers teach “box braids tutorials” while the originators of these styles remain underpaid or erased.

At the same time, a burgeoning market of Black-owned brands is emerging. In Portugal, companies are selling products specifically for curly and coily textures, often with ingredients sourced from Angola or Mozambique. In Luanda, stylists increasingly organize workshops for girls to embrace natural hair, reclaiming texture as a form of power.

Yet, these efforts remain unevenly supported. As artist and activist Grada Kilomba puts it:

“Racism is not only about exclusion but also about inclusion into subordinated positions.” (Plantation Memories, 2008)

In other words, the embrace of Afro aesthetics by the mainstream often comes stripped of political urgency and detached from the people who birthed them.

Braiding Futures

Toward the end of a long afternoon in Almada, across the river from Lisbon, a woman in her sixties adjusts her gele headwrap and helps a teenage girl part her hair. Around them, the chatter fades as hands begin their patient work. The braid is slow, methodical. It’s the same motion done centuries ago in a village in Bissau or on a porch in Bahia. But now it also includes Portuguese slang, Spotify playlists, and jokes about immigration bureaucracy.

There is something futurist about this repetition. A resilience encoded in style. The braid becomes both archive and possibility—a form of speculative aesthetics that threads history into tomorrow.