Care / Condition / Control

About

Humans are obsessed with hair. And hair is never just hair. Intensely personal, it is quite literally how people frame themselves to signal their desired appearance to others. Individuals use hair as an expressive language to convey both their individuality and collective affiliations, and societies in turn regulate hair as a means to enforce and maintain social control, allegiance, and order. Be it conforming or rebellious, hair reflects and negotiates the social contracts between individuals and gender, racial, subcultural, and religious identities. Hair can elicit polarizing responses–from envy to repulsion–acting as a nimble proxy for culture, time, place, age, identity, growth, and vitality.