Hair! Human Stories

An intriguing journey into the world of hair. From intimate personal stories to unexpectedly global tales about hair’s circulation around the world, this exhibition explores our curious relationship to hair and the potential of exhibitions for disseminating academic research to wider publics.
The exhibition brings together Professor Emma Tarlo’s ethnographic photographs documenting the global trade in human hair from India, China, Myanmar, Europe and USA with hair-related ephemera, contemporary art works made from human hair by artists and designers, and short films exploring the significance of hair in people’s lives.

Gabriela Nicolescu’s role in this exhibition was to assist Emma Tarlo transform her research material (already published in a book: Entanglement, The Secret Lives of Hair) into exhibition material, prompt to things and themes that were selected to be put on display, help with space procurement, budgeting, work with designers Caitlin and Calum Storrie for the curation of the exhibition. As part of the curatorial work Gabriela organised a series of public engagement activities in conjunction with the exhibition and generated and collated impact in relation to the above. The material on display is ready to travel to other galleries and museums, and can be explored following the link: http://hairhumanstories.co.uk/