Bad hair day? This sexy, icky, potent display might just be the answer

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Some years ago, I had an Italian fellow who couldn’t basal to find a hairsbreadth successful the bed. It struck maine arsenic bizarre: however tin you entity to thing truthful inevitable? Hair is portion of our lives, whether we’re trying to tame it, region it, alteration it oregon clasp connected to it. It’s intimate, almighty and political. Across cultures, hairsbreadth often represents strength, fertility and beauty. It is besides associated with the mystical.

During the Inquisition, it was thought that women deemed to beryllium witches could power the upwind by unleashing their hair. In Nazi attraction camps, heads were shaved arsenic portion of a dehumanising process that stripped prisoners of their individuality and culture. But successful immoderate cultures, baldness is revered; Buddhist monks and nuns routinely shave their heads.

A caller amusement astatine Heide Museum of Modern Art takes an ambitious look astatine the analyzable value of hair. Hair Pieces has been a agelong clip coming, says elder curator Melissa Keys; it has been challenging to enactment together, successful portion due to the fact that hairsbreadth has these precise acheronian associations – but it’s besides playful and light.

Installation view, Hair Pieces astatine Heide.

“It’s benignant of thing and everything astatine the aforesaid time,” Keys says. “It was a process of accepting that it’s really important to person each of those things successful the premix arsenic well, due to the fact that it’s a spot unnatural to bring things that interaction connected quality atrocities unneurotic with immoderate things that are humorous but, successful the end, I realised it was necessary.”

Through caller and aged works crossed genres by 38 artists from 8 countries, the amusement takes implicit Heide’s main gallery.

According to Keys, hairsbreadth is associated with quality and sometimes with wellness and vitality, but besides mortality. “We subordinate it with surrealism and the uncanny and the unconscious but it’s besides truthful overmuch much than that. It’s social, taste and governmental and an economical signifier arsenic well, and rather often it is contradictory,” she says.

“Hair contains this multiplicity of associations and that was 1 of the things that truly funny maine astir it – its complexity and the information that it is precise hard to benignant of pin down. That’s 1 of the reasons artists perpetually travel backmost to it.”

Artist Julie Rrap has utilized hairsbreadth successful her enactment successful antithetic ways implicit the years. Hairline Crack, 1992, held astatine the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was made portion she was surviving successful Europe, and encloses quality hairsbreadth successful a perspex handrail. It was designed to spell astir a constrictive space, playing connected architecture and the hairline crack.

She recalls making it and the unruly hairsbreadth popping out, refusing to enactment successful place, reminiscent of a bikini line. From a distance, it looks similar a woody handrail but person inspection reveals quality hairsbreadth wrong the glass. “It’s similar a enactment connected the wall, it’s respective metres agelong and the hairsbreadth benignant of spills out; it’s somewhat sexy successful a way, rather funny.

“I had this play erstwhile I was surviving successful Europe wherever I utilized hairsbreadth due to the fact that it didn’t outgo thing to get, I’d spell to hairdressers and I could conscionable get piles and piles of hair,” she says. “It’s rather a arguable material. It was rather delicate to usage it due to the fact that evidently the past of the warfare and the Holocaust and each those hideous stories. Culturally it’s besides received precise otherwise too, it tin person rather magical, potent resonances successful definite cultures.”

Julie Rrap and her Heide exhibit, Horse’s Tale (detail), from the bid Porous Bodies, 1999.

The weird happening astir hair, which Rrap discovered picking it up from hairdressers “is the infinitesimal it’s chopped and it falls connected the crushed it becomes this benignant of matter”. “It wholly shifts cogwheel and becomes thing discarded and a spot horrible truthful it’s precise interesting, which is what fascinated maine erstwhile I was utilizing it. It’s got this rather abhorrent [quality], it tin determination from thing beauteous to thing rather grotesque and disconcerting.”

It’s a precise potent material, she says, connected to quality but besides the abject.

Rrap’s enactment often deals with representations of women. The inactive Horse’s Tale from the bid Porous Bodies, made successful 1999, is portion of the Heide show. “A horse’s process coming retired of my bum,” is however she describes it with a laugh.

Keys describes it arsenic “an equine appendage sprouting from her backstage domain”. “It’s some titillating and it’s witty, and it’s a parody connected the objectification of women passim the past of creation and advertising,” she says. “It pushes up against those patriarchal views of the benignant of the monstrous feminine, and alternatively than recoiling from hair, she’s embracing this thought of women’s earthy hirsute forms done that.”

How overmuch hairsbreadth women should person and wherever it should beryllium connected their bodies is explored successful the show. Hair goes done cycles, Keys says, sometimes we clasp it and different times we consciousness forced to region it. “Throughout the past of creation and culture, of course, it’s ever been political, but successful the ’60s and ‘70s it truly comes to the fore, peculiarly successful the ’70s,” she says. “It was a precise hirsute time.”

Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants), 1972.

The precocious Cuban-born creator Ana Mendieta’s enactment Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants) tackles this precise issue. The bid of photographs are portion of her experimentations during the aboriginal 1970s that progressive altering her carnal quality done a scope of cosmetic interventions. In the bid of images, she glues a antheral friend’s facial hairsbreadth onto her ain face.

“These [works] rather often incorporated hairsbreadth and wigs, which were employed to question and rupture sex constructions and stereotypes,” says Keys.

The enactment was besides inspired by Mendieta’s fascination with Marcel Duchamp’s sex transformations, specified arsenic his pistillate change ego Mademoiselle Rrose Sélavy.

Wiradjuri creator S.J Norman’s Magna Mater, which comprises 10 video works, is 1 of the multimedia installations successful the show. It features footage of 12 First Nations radical who each place arsenic antheral and with whom Norman is successful kinship. It’s a peculiarly beauteous work, says Keys.

“The creator asked the participants to papers themselves having their hairsbreadth brushed, 100 strokes each time implicit the people of the aforesaid satellite cycle,” she says. “The brushing is performed by caregivers and household and Norman sees the performances arsenic acts of consensual intimacy and care.”

Christina May Carey, Hypnagogia, 2021-2024.

Charlie Sofo with Debris Facility’s Found Combs (2007 - ongoing) is simply a postulation of combs they’ve recovered connected the streets. This enactment is strangely touching, Keys says.

“This amassed assemblage of idiosyncratic objects that person been stranded and past reclaimed from nationalist spaces. Most of the combs are worse for wear, they’ve got each these breached teeth and there’s bits of residual hairsbreadth stuck successful them; immoderate are intact, and others look unused.”

Ulay/Marina Abramović, Relation successful Time, 1977.

Also included successful the amusement is Australian creator Christina May Carey, whose installation portion looks similar a location bureau setup of mobiles and laptop screens. Hypnagogia displays video of hairsbreadth being braided. The enactment is simply a effect to a feeling of disequilibrium, arsenic the favoritism betwixt surface spaces and the carnal assemblage blur.

Sadie Chandler’s Object II, 1993, shows a mop of hairsbreadth protruding from a tin can, suggesting women oregon quality arsenic a commodity, successful a motion to Andy Warhol.

Other highlights see enactment by John Meade, Louise Weaver, Patricia Piccinini and Christian Thompson, arsenic good arsenic planetary artists Marina Abramovic, Sonia Boyce and Janine Antoni.

There’s besides a humorous enactment by Chinese/Australian creator Chunxiao Qu, called Wig Shoes. A remark connected the usage of carnal tegument and fur wrong the manner industry, it asks what if these products were made from you, from your hairsbreadth and from your skin?

“The fluffy story-book prime of the shoes collides with the artist’s real-world concerns astir carnal exploitation and harm,” Keys says. “So it benignant of draws you in, it’s delightful. And past you realise that it’s really got a spot of bite.”

Hair Pieces is astatine Heide Museum of Modern Art until October 6.

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