FOLLI-PHOBIA

Abstract

 Human hair is as historically rich as it is culturally significant, yet, despite its many traditional uses and the fact that it is a readily available and ever-growing material, most hair, once cut, is immediately discarded. In the contemporary context of resource extraction, excess, and waste, the question arises: what value do these meaningless clippings hold, and how can they reshape our understanding of the self, the collective and the environment? This research highlights the potential of human hair as an abundant and overlooked resource for environmental monitoring. It introduces two human-hair installations that attempt to respond to the above; the first, ‘Foll(i)cle’, is an interactive public pavilion that measures urban toxicity; the second, ‘Hairarium’, reinterprets material and aesthetic ideologies between humans and non-humans.