kellee morgado

Acknowledging, and even embracing, body hair has long been considered trivial, marginal, and not worthy of attention, yet we spend many hours giving it just that, our attention. Product reviews, YouTube tutorials, and carefully curated personal accounts on social media reaffirm imposed beauty standards daily. This work began from a simple comment, “don’t cut your hair, it’s beautiful” and expands upon this statement in an effort to disrupt and explore the relationship between hair that is considered valuable and that which must be hidden, removed, and made invisible. 

These works explore hair as both a material and a concept through experimental printing processes. The hair is modified using aggressive additive and subtractive rituals commonly associated with hair including dyeing, bleaching, and epilating. With hair unattached to its respective bodies, its value shifts. It becomes the imperfections in a clean sink, a line left behind on the pillow, a beloved keepsake, a memorial, and a commodity. Giving hair value off the body through contextualizing it as art is not new, rather this work adds to this ongoing conversation through consideration of which hair is worthy of value and being seen as art. 

This ongoing inquiry explores my own experience with femininity, womanhood, and the perception of hair along with contributions from other feminine presenting, and woman-aligned people through the experimentation of material and text to engage viewers in conversation. 

MATERIALS

human hair, screen printed type (screen print ink, hair dye, hair bleach), wood panels, muslin wax strips, body wax, digital printing. letterpress printing, lead type