Hairy situations

The quai Branly museum in Paris recently opened a temporary exhibition on the power, esthetics and intimacy of hair: Cheveux chéris.


The exhibition's curator, Yves Le Fur, writes:

Addressing the idea that individuals and social groups display personality through hairstyle, presented first in terms of frivolity: competing blonds, brunettes or redheads, straight or frizzy as seen in a wide range of classical paintings, sculptures and portrait photographs. Comparing the coquetries of Papua New Guinea, those of the beautiful urban African or haute coiffure artists, the exhibition moves towards the idea of a human material to be shaped and sculpted, a medium both for knowledge and the relativity of beauty but also an object of loss, a symbol of time passing, illness and death.

The exhibition may be seen until Bastille day next year: July 14th 2013.