WHAT WE MAKE FROM HAIR AND WHAT HAIR MAKES FROM US
- Feb 21, 2016
- 2 min read
Since yesterday you can visit HAAR! in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. An exhibition of fashion and art made out of 100% human hair. Ugh, I must admit that when I first read about it, it shivered down my spine. As long the hair is still attached to the body I don't mind, but littering hair (in especially kitchens and bathrooms and when it's not my own) disgust me, and I believe I'm not alone here. Which is quite funny, if you imagine that as long as it is on our head we take good care of it, and it shapes our appearance - but when it is sticking to the shower wall or the countertop it is horrific. And that's exactly the idea behind the exhibition: exposing the peculiar love and hate relationship with hair. Oh, and I am curious about how artists like Christiaan Houtenbos and Sara Bomans have made clothing, shoes, furniture, embroidery and drawings from hair.
So apparently, we can do a lot with hair. But hair does a lot with us, too. Our hair shapes our appearance. It makes you look different, or it makes you look like a wallflower. We use our hair to express ourselves, just like the exhibiting HAAR! artists do, too. We use it to show who we are, what we are... We can individualize ourselves with it or make ourselves disappear in the crowd. The Facebook page Huisvrouwen met een kortpittig kapsel, is a page where women with a short and often dyed hairdo (and there are many!) are all lumped as housemoms next door and bargain hunters at heart. Lumped as they are, the hairdo's are so extrovert that I think they did it to stand out under the guise of let's go crazy. Although this page is quite exaggerated and the stories pairing the (profile)pictures are made up, I've experienced in my social network that kortpittig has become a common noun.
Comments