{"id":302185,"date":"2026-05-06T06:25:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/302185\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T06:25:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:25:35","slug":"jasmine-ross-documents-black-identity-through-beauty-plus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/302185\/","title":{"rendered":"Jasmine Ross documents Black identity through ‘Beauty Plus’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At age 22, Oakland-based artist Jasmine Ross is the youngest award recipient ever in the Museum of the African Diaspora\u2019s annual Emerging Artists Program. Honored in MoAD\u2019s 10th cohort, Ross, along with Demetri Broxton, Dorian Reid and Tahirah Rasheed, will receive a $10,000 award and significant professional development and marketing support from the institution. Notably, the award grants each recipient with a two-month solo exhibition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ross\u2019 \u201cBeauty Plus,\u201d an exhibit of her fine art documentary photography centered on a now-closed Black-owned beauty supply in New Haven, Connecticut, opened March 18 in the MoAD Salon and remains on view through May 31.<\/p>\n

The origins of \u201cBeauty Plus\u201d began while Ross was completing a B.A. in ethics, politics, economics and art at Yale College. Describing herself in an interview as having \u201ca hustle mentality\u201d and dreaming of attending an Ivy League university since she was a girl, she represents the third-generation of \u201cself-made, scrappy, driven women\u201d in her family.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMy mom is CFO at GitLab and has worked in finance for Deloitte, Salesforce and others,\u201d she says. \u201cMy younger brother pursued music, so I figured there could only be one \u2018creative\u2019 in the family. My dad is a lawyer and has his own practice. We were always close, but I identified with my mother and pressured myself to go into the finance, corporate field. My grandmother grew up in Compton and was the oldest of seven children. She had to take care of her siblings, and Nana\u2019s still the family caretaker today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ross grew up near Lake Merritt, attending Redwood Day School from K-8th grade before attending the Cate School, a college preparatory boarding\u00a0and day\u00a0school\u00a0in Santa Barbara. Her grandmother still lives in and manages the Oakland apartment building where Ross and her mother spent her earliest years.<\/p>\n

Determined since her youth to attend a school like Yale, Ross attributes the early yearning to being the child of Black survivalist entrepreneur parents. Although they never pushed her to follow their career paths, when she wanted to go on a Spanish immersion trip, her father asked, \u201cHow are you going to pay for it?\u201d She raised $2,000 selling candy at her brother\u2019s basketball games.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father instilled in me an entrepreneurship that\u2019s particular to Black communities,\u201d she states. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely been informative to my sense of determination. My parents aren\u2019t artists, but they\u2019re creatives. Entrepreneurship\u2014you have to be creative. I studied ethics, politics, economics and arts because to me it\u2019s important to bridge that struggling artist trope. So many artists never achieve financial viability.\u201d<\/p>\n

One hard lesson about finance and trust as a professional artist came early for Ross. Offered a solo exhibit at a Chelsea gallery in New York City and promised a $10,000 budget, the situation became negative. \u201cIt left me with a $6,000 bill. It was a blindsiding relationship. I\u2019m grateful I was graduating and had mentors who imparted wisdom about doing a poster, making a zine, asking for support, engaging with my community. I fundraised $22,000 and bounced back,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n

A good portion of those funds helped her self-produce \u201cBeauty Plus.\u201d The first showing was in Los Angeles, and she partnered with her brother. \u201cArtists he works with performed,\u201d she notes. \u201cIt was an art experience that was relatable to people, even if they weren\u2019t in the fine arts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>OAKLAND PHOTOGRAPHER Jasmine Ross, 22, is the youngest award recipient ever in the Museum of the African Diaspora\u2019s annual Emerging Artists Program.\u00a0(Photo courtesy of Jasmine Ross)<\/p>\n

Prior to pursuing photography, Ross was a ceramicist. She loved the tactile nature of the craft and the slow process, even those times when waiting hours for a piece to reach final stages resulted in \u201cfailure.\u201d The practice of patience in part explains why she uses primarily a Chamonix large format analog camera and feels an affinity for long hours spent in a darkroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a sense of involvement,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can go in for six hours and come out with nothing. If you put your negatives in wrong, use the wrong chemicals, you can have grainy images. The frustrating things can also produce something very beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ross began her association with Beauty Plus owner Mel Hylton when she was Hylton\u2019s customer. She had long admired how the products and shop design told complex stories of economic exploitation and the commodification of Black culture\u2014and who benefits from it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started working with Mel, we called the mannequins, \u2018The Ladies,\u2019\u201d says Ross. Lisa, a longtime employee, provided the hand-done decoration and decoupage for the wig mannequins. \u201cIt speaks to how they saw these as not just objects, but representations of Black women and deserving of being adorned,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

Many of the photographs are a form of time-capture, showing portraits of longtime employees such as Mel\u2019s sister, Liz, and in one, Mel\u2019s husband, Rudy Hylton. \u201cLiz passed away a few years ago and had been a part of the store for almost 30 years. Rudy\u2019s behind the counter in another photograph. After years as an educator, he said he \u2018retired\u2019 and moved to an unpaid job, which was Beauty Plus,\u201d says Ross. There\u2019s a quiet pride in their faces that hints of humanity and dignity, signature features of Ross\u2019 portfolio.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>BEAUTY PLUS \u2018Marlana\u2019 (2025) by Jasmine Ross, on exhibit at MoAD. (Photo by Francis Baker, courtesy of MoAD)<\/p>\n

An image of a wall with multiple posters carves into equally deep issues. A large poster shows a woman in a glamorous gold dress and bears the brand name, \u201cMotions.\u201d Ross says, \u201cI have a cinematic eye and come from a fashion background, and there\u2019s a focus on the (posture) and warmth of the woman in the gold dress. Motion and other brands were not Black-owned but allowed women to shape and share their identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briefly touching on images from other collections on her website, Ross speaks about a photo of a man in a swimming pool on a makeshift floaty made with pool noodles. \u201cIt\u2019s leisurely, disarming,\u201d she notes. \u201cHe\u2019s not concerned with representing a traditional sense of masculinity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A closeup of a Black woman inspired by Dawoud Bey portraits she saw offers \u201cmicro\/macro expressions of Black culture and identity\u201d in gold, maximalist jewelry, bold eyelashes and kinky curls. A photo of a young girl in a blood-red party dress playing with a Black doll is deliberately unposed: One bare foot peeks out from the layers of chiffon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved being in my Sunday best and playing with dolls. It feels like a part of my childhood,\u201d Ross says.<\/p>\n

Moving forward, she will continue her work fostering opportunities for early career artists as a gallery associate at SF Camerawork.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m figuring out how to be a resource for other artists,\u201d says Ross. \u201cI want to talk about the business of art, whether that\u2019s through a Substack, panel discussions, a podcast. I\u2019m an abundance thinker, and there\u2019s room for everybody. I\u2019ll always be rooted in collaborative processes with my community and the subjects (I photograph) who become my fictive kin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jasmine Ross\u2019 \u2018Beauty Plus\u2019 exhibits through May 31 at the Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St., San Francisco. For more info, visit moadsf.org<\/a> or jasminereneeross.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jasmine Ross\u2019 \u2018Beauty Plus\u2019 exhibits through May 31 at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. (Photo by Francis Baker, courtesy of MoAD)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At age 22, Oakland-based artist Jasmine Ross is the youngest award recipient ever in the Museum of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[48909,12345,143,5809,145,144],"class_list":["post-302185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-african-american-art","tag-museum-of-the-african-diaspora","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-artist","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}