Stripping Down to Our Hair at 601Artspace
Installation view of Care / Condition / Control, curated by A.E. Chapman Courtesy of Etienne Frossard and 601Artspace.
Down the drain, swept up, sold, trashed, donated, praised, unkempt, yanked, cut, burned, permed, repulsive, sexy, and utterly inescapable. Hair is one of the most accessible, sustainable materials; its history transcends cultures and borders. It has never been merely a scalp adornment; it carries our histories, serving as a living, tangible anthology of memories, stories, and identity. From the Yoruba people’s integration of locking and braiding into their spirituality to Victorian-era hair lockets serving as familial memorabilia; from powdered wigs marking status in the 18th century to military-mandated buzz cuts enforcing conformity. “Humans are obsessed with hair,” declares Care / Condition / Control curator A.E. Chapman, and I’d have to agree. The beauty in hair as a medium is its vivacity—its refusal to decompose, its power in life and death, in ceremony, and its ability to evoke awe and abjection simultaneously.
Care / Condition / Control is a hair-based exhibition showcasing the work of seventeen artists, spanning from 1977 to the present. Featuring well-established artists Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince and emerging to mid-career artists alike, this show feels expansive. A.E. Chapman calls upon a diverse range of experiences, weaving together Native oral history practices, queer liberation, domestic labor, Black joy, fetish, sexuality, and gendered performance. This fiercely dynamic show takes all forms of art production under its wing, including assemblage, video, metalsmithing, photography, printmaking, drawing, and performance. The show’s title, Care / Condition / Control, makes a methodical allusion to the many ways society interacts with hair—be it unseen domestic labor (care), expressions of identity and history-keeping (condition), or an instrument of oppression (control).
Installation view of Care / Condition / Control, curated by A.E. Chapman Courtesy of Etienne Frossard and 601Artspace.
Just before entering the 601Artspace’s arched doors, the viewer is met with Rebecca Bair’s Collaboration with the Sun III, a massive Afro-pick pressed onto the floor-to-ceiling window. From the sidewalk, it is easily mistaken for a vinyl decal. Closer inspection reveals its thick, chalky surface, breathing life into the work.
In this third installation of the Vancouver-based artist’s site-specific series, Bair takes a non-figurative approach, employing charcoal derived from coconut husk and shea butter as paint, hair as the brush, and the sun as a sealant. Using her hair to press the charcoal paste into the glass, Bair strips the Afro-pick from its utilitarian context and relegates it to a symbol of strength. The hair itself becomes the tool. Her act of pressing the pick into existence challenges the pick’s intended use of stretching and fluffing Afros. Using hair to create the symbol and then stripping its presence from the viewer is an act of protest. When Black hair is so oft contested—in professional and academic spaces—Bair’s refusal to commodify her hair for public consumption while leaving evidence of its labor is perfectly articulated in the pick as a symbol. It is in this act of stripping that we find the crux of this exhibition.
Magdalena Dukiewicz, Object #15, 2023. Artist’s hair, found object, 10 x 10 x 1.5 inches. Courtesy of Magdalena Dukiewicz.
The exploration of hair as a tool continues with Magdalena Dukiewicz’s Object #15, in which five tufts of the artist’s hair penetrate the blade of a kitchen knife. This gesture feels particularly violent, like we are seeing the remnants of a guillotined ponytail. The kitchen knife places us in the domestic sphere, invoking “the pervasive nature of domestic violence,” per Dukiewicz.
Just inches below Object #15, Dukiewicz reclaims her power with Object #11, a long, blonde braid bound to the handle of a knife. The found object’s slick, metallic curves contrast the limp golden plait, evoking erotic equipment. The pendulous braid replacing the knife’s blade is a testimony to resilience, a battle won. The braid serves as a synecdoche for femininity to the artist, who has cut her long hair short as a young girl after observing her femininity was a source of unnecessary peril.
Calli Roche, All Inclusive, 2022. Leather, aluminum foil, synthetic braiding hair, plastic beads. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of Etienne Frossard/601Artspace.
Carrying on with golden braids, Afro-Caribbean artist Calli Roche explores themes of perverse interiority, violence, and care in their braided flogger, All Inclusive. Roche employs near-platinum synthetic braids as the flogger’s tresses. The soft, lightweight braids are fortified with black beads and aluminum foil at the tips. The tension between the materiality of each component makes for a strikingly complex object. Initially, the blonde braids read as a whip, calling to mind racial violence, cultural appropriation, or internalized racism. I take a step back to clock my projections. It is a flogger, a tool of sensuality. As All Inclusive toes the line between pain and pleasure, I commend Roche’s ability to present the viewer with perfectly puzzling open-ended questions.
Germaine Koh, Fête, 1997-ongoing. Artist’s hair, ribbon, binging. 21 x 430 inches. Courtesy of Etienne Frossard/601Artspace.
As a keeper of our histories and a tangible anthology of our lives, what does the habitual disposal of our hair reveal about us? Spanning roughly thirty-five feet and twenty-four years, Germaine Koh’s Fête honors aging through discarded hair. Strung up in wefts delineated by year, this timekeeper begins in 1997, and though the work is ongoing, this iteration ends in 2021. Too often, shed hair is seen as a burden, something to get rid of‚ flush away, sweep up, and trash. Koh rejects this perceived triviality, carefully collecting her strands and embroidering the year into the binding. Fête’s configuration mimics a birthday banner, offering a jubilant respite from an otherwise intense show. As aging challenges the conventions of “femininity,” it is refreshing to see work that honors and celebrates each passing stage.
Installation view of Care / Condition / Control, curated by A.E. Chapman Courtesy of Etienne Frossard and 601Artspace.
Bangs, bobs, and blonde bombshells. Greer Lankton’s 1989 mixed-media piece, If you can pass for a girl, critiques society’s rigid limits of femininity. A Pippi Longstocking-esque synthetic wig sits atop a small vanity mirror that reads, “If you can pass for a girl, then anyone can.” In this tongue-in-cheek gesture, Lankton memorializes her sister’s snarky response to her transition. Parodying some of the most pervasive stereotypes of “perfect womanhood,” Lankton explores her sister’s bare-bones perspective of femininity. This work toggles between painful and playful; it presents the nuclear wife doctrine as a folly. If you can pass for a girl calls to mind a moment from legendary trans writer McKenzie Wark’s memoir, Reverse Cowgirl. She analyzes cisgender femininity, writing, “She pressed so hard into femme that it was as if she was fucking her own look from the inside.” Lamkton’s synthetic bob echoes Wark’s sentiment, emphasizing hair’s role in performing femme.
Care / Condition / Control is a masterclass in expansive exploration, not just of hair, but the impact our biomaterials hold in building and telling our histories. The artists have carefully carved out avenues for intersectional exploration of hair as a medium, as a circumstance, and as an identity marker. It is a remarkable show.
Care / Condition / Control is on view at 601 Artspace from February 22 to April 27, 2025.
