Da Braidr is a conceptual start-up that imagines the application of artificial intelligence within the informal economy of Black hair braiding.
The project aims to provide both braiders and clients with tools for optimizing pre-appointment decisions including style selection, time estimation and labor costs. Referring to it as a "start-up" serves both to adopt and critically reflect on the rhetoric of technocapitalism, which often promises simplistic solutions to deeply rooted structural issues. The project’s first speculative product is a multimodal AI system capable of generating customized braid styles while estimating the time and effort required to produce them. The idea emerges from the artist’s direct experience in Harlem’s braiding salons, where hair braiding becomes a ritual of care, a political act, an aesthetic practice, and a response to a long history of discrimination. Within a beauty economy marked by systemic racialization, where hair choices can shape access to education, employment, or healthcare, the project questions the potential of generative AI as a critical and strategic tool in the hands of Black women.