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

The Brașov Art Museum is currently hosting Where the Sky Burns, a solo exhibition by visual artist Diana Serghiuță, under the curatorial vision of Mihai Zgondoiu.

The Artist & her Art

Featuring Diana Serghiuță’s latest body of work, the exhibition marks a meaningful return to her native Brașov (Romania). For the first time, the local audience is invited to experience her art in a dedicated solo presentation. Currently living and working in Arad, the artist brings with her a rich, symbolic visual language shaped by personal mythology and introspective exploration.

Running through August 18, 2025, the exhibition leads viewers into an evocative world where timeless symbols—such as the serpent, fire, and the tear—are reimagined through a distinctly contemporary artistic vocabulary. "The artist transforms these archaic symbols into a personal alphabet, rich in ambiguity and meaning. Each work becomes both a philosophical inquiry and a meditative space, where the act of looking turns into a rite of passage," explains Alexandra Ilnițchi-Ardelean, responsible for Communication and PR at the Brașov Art Museum.

"Beyond the dense, gestural painting and the ethereal, almost sacred sensuality of her drawing, the exhibition invokes cultural memory, recovering forgotten meanings in a world increasingly consumed by material reality," she adds.

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Born in 1985 in Brașov, Diana Serghiuță is a visual artist whose work delves into the intricate and vulnerable dimensions of the human psyche. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design in Timișoara, with a focus on Painting, she completed her Master’s studies in 2010, followed by a PhD in Visual Arts at UVT in 2016.

Her artistic approach gives shape to emotional and psychological states that reside at the threshold between reality and imagination. Serghiuță’s compositions open up intimate, symbolic spaces—laden with personal references and veiled narratives—where memory and identity intersect. Her visual language is infused with a contemporary, feminine sensibility, reinterpreting fragments of her own life into poetic, often enigmatic forms. She currently lives and works in Arad, Romania.

Mihai Zgondoiu (born 1982, Mediaș) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, independent curator, and gallerist, with a PhD in Visual Arts from the National University of Arts in Bucharest (UNArte). He currently teaches as a Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timișoara (UVT).

Zgondoiu is the founder of Atelier 030202, a contemporary art space in Bucharest dedicated to experimental practices, and co-founder of the visual culture magazine PROPAGARTA. Actively engaged in both the academic and independent art scenes, he lives and works between Bucharest and Timișoara.

Photos by Brașov Art Museum