Intimates
Affiliated with System of Representation Research Project
Granted by Art and Media Department, Aalto University
Exhibition: Väre, Aalto University
The methodology bridges art practice with critical theory through four approaches: 1) Semi-structured interviews exploring hair rituals' personal and collective meanings, 2) Historical analysis of resistance practices like China's "self-combing women" and Iran's hair-cutting protests, 3) Biological grounding in maternal lineage science, and 4) Generative art processes that transform interviews and portraits into evolving digital hairscapes. The theoretical framework innovatively merges feminist materialism (analyzing hair as living cultural archive), posthuman biology (using mitochondrial evidence to counter patriarchal kinship narratives), and embodied phenomenology (studying touch as non-verbal intersubjective communication).
Tools: P5js, Arduino
This interdisciplinary research examines women's hair as both a site of patriarchal control and a medium for resistance. Centered on the interactive installation *Intimates*, the project combines oral histories from seven racially diverse women with their biological hair samples and touch-sensitive combs that convert brushing motions into generative digital hair growth patterns. It challenges sexual hegemony by revealing three interlinked truths: how patriarchal systems fragment female solidarity through bodily discipline, how combing rituals rebuild non-sexualized intimacy through tactile communication, and how mitochondrial DNA's maternal inheritance patterns offer biological evidence for women's inherent connections beyond cultural constructs.
As both researcher and artist, I developed technical skills in sensory coding (p5.js for responsive visualizations), critical curation (integrating sound ethnography with material artifacts), and new materialist theory-building. The project culminates in an essay articulating "bio-cultural syncretism" - a concept challenging nature/culture binaries through hair's dual status as biological matter and cultural symbol. Outcomes include the interactive installation, recorded oral histories, and a written thesis, collectively offering multisensory evidence for women's enduring, biologically-rooted solidarity systems.
Exhibition Documentary
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