Hair!

The showcase highlights the role of hair and hairstyles within society, politics, and everyday life. Featuring works spanning from Herlinde Koelbl’s iconic portrait of Angela Merkel to  J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere’s seminal documentation of traditional Nigerian hair designs, this high-carat group exhibition illustrates that hair is much more than a whimsical stylistic accessory. It can also be a profound expression of identity, a means of communication, and a powerful social statement.

Be it Afros, locs, braids or cornrows, a bob, beehive or taper: hair is an immediate form of expression with endless possibilities. The choice to display or conceal body hair, facial hair, or the hair on our heads, to let it grow or to cut it short, conveys not just a person’s individuality but often also their belonging to a cultural, political or social demographic. In the tension field between intimacy and public representation, we reveal our conformity, rebelliousness, or solidarity in how we wear our hair.

With images by photographers such as Helmut Newton, Chaumont-Zaerpour or Suffo Moncloa (who orchestrated their protagonists’ hair not as fashion accessories but as central compositional elements), all the way to artists like Hoda Afshar, Thandiwe Muriu or Maria Tomanova, who captured hair as a symbol of resistance and emancipation, the survey shows that hair photography is not a prerogative of the beauty industry, but also the subject of queer-feminist and post-colonial discourses. At the same time, Grow It, Show It! examines how depictions of hair have, in themselves, come to shape trends – both in the context of photography history and through modern social media formats like tutorials and ASMR videos.