Riverside museum stages body adornment exhibit

An Inland Empire museum wants your body. Actually what you put on your body. The Riverside Metropolitan Museum is seeking tattooed and bejeweled subjects for an exhibit called “Adornment.”

The exhibit will explore the myriad ways we illustrate our bodies, puncture our flesh and even discipline our hair. People are invited to share these and other types of body modifications and the stories that inspired them.

“People can talk about the special ways they adorn themselves,” says the museum’s associate curator of education Danielle Leland. “Maybe it’s a piercing or maybe just a special piece of jewelry like a necklace that has some meaning or the color of nail polish they wear to how they braid their hair or color it. We’re asking people to let kind of let us know the ways that they adorn themselves.”

Some of the submitted narratives along with accompanying photographs and videos will be weaved into an exhibit that’ll also include examples of centuries-old body adornment ephemera from Native American, African and Asian cultures. Leland says there will likely be a big emphasis on tattooing trends past and present.

“I got a message from a woman who says she’s in her 70s and she recently got a tattoo of her son who had passed away,” says Leland. “Sometime people’s perception is that this is a youthful thing so I think its great when you can have an example of something that kind of throws people biases or their initial perception, it kind of throws them off a little bit. It goes beyond whatever the tradition was or the significance within a cultural group, now it can be more about just individual expression.”

The “Adornment” exhibit opens in March. There’s an open callout to anyone interested in putting their own body adornments on view. The first chance is Thursday night 7-10 p.m., and again on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum.