Hair Exhibition goes back to the Roots

Hair is not only an obsession with some people - it's also an art form. An art exhibition at the Bellerive Museum in Zürich goes to the root of the subject.

Hair is not only an obsession with some people – it’s also an art form. An art exhibition at the Bellerive Museum in Zürich goes to the root of the subject.

Entitled “Hair – Obsession and Art”, it covers much more than the art of hairdressing. For example jewellery made of human hair was popular during the 19th century, and hair had special significance as a memento of someone who had died.

It was also fashionable for women to give a locket containing a lock of their hair to men as a romantic gesture.

Rings, necklaces and bracelets are in the exhibition and even clothing made from hair. Perhaps the most unusual is a bikini.

Other surprises include a darkened room with video installations about hair. As visitors enter, their faces come into contact with strands of hair hanging from the ceiling.

The exhibition catalogue begins with an essay by British author Marina Warner. “Human beings as a species are distinguished by the ordeals to which they submit hair,” she writes, “and by a world-wide obsessive artfulness with hairdressing.”

This is borne out by a montage of illustrated magazine articles, including one headlined « Suffering to be Beautiful ». Some deal with the lengths to which people go in order to remove unwanted body hair, while others are about claims to combat baldness.

The exhibition ends on May 21.

By Richard Dawson