Since 2019, the HOOPS Portrait Project has given a platform to lovers of hoop earrings.
Milwaukee artist Nicole Acosta started the project with several photographs and accompanying stories. As she traveled to different cities taking more photos, it became a hit with hoop earring wearers globally. It’s even been adapted into a stage play.
On Aug. 28, Acosta’s growing HOOPS project will open at the Racine Art Museum’s Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts.
I joined Nicole Acosta on a Monday afternoon at the Racine Art Museum as she was mapping out the rooms where ‘HOOPS’ will be on display.
Acosta says 2024 was supposed to be a year of rest for her, but HOOPS keeps taking on new life.
She explains what HOOPS is about.
"The HOOPS Project is a culmination of photography and stories that I’ve collected over the past five years after traveling throughout the country and setting up these sessions in these cities. I place an open call, and people have to submit to the open call," Acosta explains. "I choose my subjects based on their HOOPS stories."
Acosta says she'll usually give people three prompts: What do hoop earrings mean to you? Where is your favorite place that you wear your hoop earrings? What is your favorite memory of your hoop earrings?"
Once Acosta collects peoples’ stories and photos, they go into shows like the one opening in Racine.
HOOPS debuted in 2019 — Acosta says the following year, the pandemic helped propel it because that was a time when people were reckoning with identity. And with this project, they were hearing from people they wouldn’t have otherwise.
"People on the outside who don’t understand what hoop earrings are or the symbolism that they hold, kind of break down their own perspectives and the stigmas surrounding hoops earrings. So, yeah, it’s been quite the journey so far," she says.
The Equity Innovation Fund grant from the United Way of Racine County helped bring the HOOPS show to the Racine Art Museum.
It created the opportunity for additional programming, such as a table read of excerpts from the HOOPS stage play and a community conversation.
Tricia Blasko, the museum’s director of education, highlights the community impact. "We are bringing in second graders, fifth graders, eighth graders, you know, just different community members throughout the Racine County," Blasko says. "And just being able to share Nicole’s story but then the narrative of all of the subject matters is I think is just a great opportunity for us to have this educational moment that we wouldn’t necessarily always get to have."
Lena Vigna, the museum’s director of exhibitions, says HOOPS gets people thinking and talking about the significance of what people wear.
"I very often talk about what people wear and why they wear it. You know, what are the histories of it because there’s personal histories, social histories, economic history, you know, all that stuff," Vigna says.
HOOPS creator, Acosta says it’s an honor for people to share their stories with her.
She’s always learning something new as to why people wear hoops. Like one of her subjects who suffers from alopecia.
"As she was getting older, it was hard for her because her confidence was like reducing because of her hair loss. But then one day, she was just like, I can’t be like this anymore, so I’m going to start to embrace this and start being very vocal. So, she’s got a big platform that she uses to talk about hair loss for women and alopecia, and she says that she wears big, huge hoops as like a way to also express her confidence," Acosta says.
Acosta says she’s had a dream that one of her portraits would end up in a museum collection. That is now a reality; the Racine Art Museum has acquired a never-before-seen HOOPS portrait that will hang on its walls, even after the show ends.
