Salon Chismosa. Community, gossip, beauty salons and kinship

Abstract

Inspired by Black and Latinx beauty salons, "Salon Chismosa" is a case study which seeks to reimagine radical community spaces through the lens of gossip, kinship and care. This Bachelor's thesis unpacks how every day acts such as yapping and complaining, are tools of resistance, healing and knowledge production. By exchanging her services for "morsels of gossip", the salon explores gossip, not as a triviality but as a decolonial method of storytelling.In this beauty salon capitalist productivity and academic hierarchies become obsolete by learning deep listening and tales of radical softness. This body of work chats about the transformative potential of spaces through queer feminist and decolonial historical teachings, where marginalised bodyminds can simply be.