Robert Pruitt’s Steeped is a stairway leading us to the future of how people could look. 

Pruitt has created a trademark out-of-this-world hairstyle in Steeped. This hairstyle is a common sight in his work. Steeped shows the allusion to escape as the sitter’s towering hair has two staircases leading up. It seems like a solid structure I could run up and not break; the subject’s hair is like an Aztec pyramid. In this future Pruitt created, afros could very well resemble architectural structures. Steeped isn’t the only time Pruitt has shaped hair into structures. Previously, he’s shaped hair into Nubian pyramids, melding together different sources of inspiration to portray individuals. It’s his way of attempting to break the limitations of people in the future and forget about the constraints society pushed onto us. 

The model in Steeped wears a distrusting expression. Often, Pruitt captures his subjects in expressions implying that the last thing they want is for anyone to be gawking at them. But this subject isn’t weary or cautious of the viewer. She might as well be saying, “Don’t look at me, get away from me, now!” 

There’s often a mix of science fiction, African culture, comic books, Afrofuturism, the divine and spirituality in Pruitt’s work. Oftentimes, he gets the family involved, asking his girlfriend and friends to stand in as models. Can they really say no to him? Those Thanksgiving dinners would be mighty awkward. A skilled draftsman, Pruitt relies on the drawing process to separate the identity of the friend who modelled for him, changing them into a whole new identity with his interpretation. In the end, the original model and the pictured persona are two different entities, often using charcoal, conte-crayons, coffee, and tea to create the image, as he did in Steeped. The drawings “quickly become fictional profiles rooted in ethnography and portraiture,” says Pruitt.