The Art Museum in Brașov , in collaboration with the Centre for Visual and Digital Anthropology, presents “HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! Contemporary Art & Anthropology”, an exhibition that brings together contemporary art and visual anthropology in a thought-provoking exploration of one of humanity’s most intimate and culturally charged materials: hair.

More than a biological feature, hair functions as a powerful carrier of identity, memory, belief, and social belonging. It grows, falls, is cut, combed, braided, dyed, replaced, rejected, or revered. Embedded within these everyday gestures are cultural practices and symbolic meanings that shape how individuals understand themselves and connect with others.

The exhibition creates a dynamic dialogue between anthropological research and contemporary artistic practice. At its core is the work of anthropologist Emma Tarlo, whose research across India, Myanmar, China, the United States, and Europe investigates the complex social, economic, and cultural lives of human hair. A central point of reference is her influential book Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair, which maps the global networks through which hair is collected, traded, transformed, and circulated.

Visitors encounter stories that range from ritual head-shaving ceremonies performed in and around temples in India to the production of sheitel wigs worn by Orthodox Jewish women, and the luxury market for premium remy hair extensions. Through these interconnected narratives, hair emerges as both a deeply personal element of the body and a global commodity shaped by religious traditions, beauty standards, economic forces, and cultural values.

The exhibition further examines the cultural and political significance of head coverings, wrapping practices, and hair-braiding traditions, while also highlighting innovative contemporary applications of hair in areas such as sustainability, ecology, and fashion.

Through multimedia and intermedia works, installations, painting, sculpture, photography, objects, and readymades, the participating artists explore themes including memory, transformation, acceptance, recycling, human-animal relationships, gender, beauty, sensuality, eroticism, ritual, alterity, and mortality. Together, their works reveal hair as a material that carries traces of personal histories while simultaneously connecting individuals to broader social and cultural narratives.

By weaving together artistic perspectives and anthropological inquiry, “HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! Contemporary Art & Anthropology” uncovers a largely unseen history of human connections. The exhibition invites visitors to consider how something as seemingly ordinary as hair can illuminate fundamental questions about identity, belonging, memory, and the ways in which people understand and navigate the world around them.

Curatorial Team

Project Curator: Gabriela Nicolescu (Anthropologist)
Contemporary Art Curator: Nora Cupcencu
Assistant Curator: Marina Aristotel

Scientific Consultant: Emma Tarlo (Anthropologist)

Participating Artists

Alexandru Ranga, Beniamin Popescu, Diana Oană, Dumitru Gorzo, Emma Tarlo, Elena Waldorf, George Soare, Ioana Bălțan, Jenni Dutton, Marina Aristotel, Mihai Zgondoiu, Mircea Modreanu, Misha Diaconu, Nora Cupcencu, Petru Lucaci, Radu Pandele, Răzvan Neagoe, Saint Machine, and Victoria Zidaru.

Photo credits: Brasov Art Museum