Hair Raising Human Hair Artwork
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More than 430 pounds of human hair are the works of artist Wenda Gu’s latest installation at the library at Dartmouth College, the Ivy League stronghold in Hanover, N.H. Hair for an 80 foot by 13 foot banner was collected over several months last year from 42,350 haircuts of Dartmouth students, faculty, staff and local residents in Hanover.
Photo United Nations: The Green House Jim Cole, AP
The college president James Wright challenged the museum to place art in unanticipated areas around the campus. The banner, called ‘United Nations: The Green House’ is composed of 40 translucent panels of glue-coated hair — long, short, curly, kinky, wavy, straight, blond, brown, black, gray and others — that float as a single panel, reports New York Times.
Two 10 letter words in green-dyed hair appear across the front of the curtain, “Educations” and “Advertises,” are superimposed over each other to appear as one.
Wenda Gu views his scrim — a drop curtain in a theater that appears opaque to the audience when lit from the front but transparent when lit from behind — as a symbol of unity, as hair contains the DNA shared by people everywhere. He suggests the ambiguity of the green words implicate the scramble of cultural values that afflicts our society and its educational outlook.
Photos: Hood Museum of Art / New York Times
The second part of the installation called ‘United Nations: United Colors’ extends along a corridor in the Berry Library. A thin braid of hair six miles long, dyed in bright colors is drawn from a plate on the floor — bearing the likeness of spaghetti — to hang in long, evenly placed loops down both sides of the corridor. Stainless steel medallions attached to sections of the braided hair bear the names of the 207 countries that comprise the United Nations, written backwards.
Gu was born in Shanghai in 1955 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York City, but maintains a studio in Shanghai, where the hair panels and the big braid were assembled. Photo Kawakahi Amina
Wenda Gu immersed himself in the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, and was regarded with avant-gardism for his attacks on language. He studied and reinvented the ancient seal script — the first unified language in China.
The resulting ideograms, or ‘pseudo characters’ as he calls them, were considered a protest against Maoist propaganda by some. When he exhibited large-scale ink paintings marked with his fake characters in 1986, the show was closed by the police. But Gu said that his goal was to explore language and reinvigorate it.
Wenda Gu’s ‘Forest of Stone Steles: Retranslation and Rewriting of Tang Poetry’ at the Johnson Museum February 20 2007. Photo Julie Magura
His large-scale ink paintings, installations and performances have earned him worldwide attention. Gu’s ‘Forest of Stone Steles: Retranslation and Rewriting of Tang Poetry’ is a group of handmade accordion books of ink rubbings from carved stone steles he created, the result of a complex process of retranslations from English renderings of poetry from the Tang dynasty from 618-907 back into Chinese, using his own lexicon, creating a ‘contemporary’ poetry completely different from the original.
Wenda Gu’s ‘United Nations: The Green House’ and ‘United Nations: United Colors’ are at the Baker-Berry Library through Oct. 28, and his ‘Forest of Stone Steles: Retranslation and Rewriting of Tang Poetry’ is at the Hood Museum of Art through Sept. 9, both at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.
Witness the reactions of visitors from the video at CourierPost Online, where they fall between the freaked out and the fascinated.
Wenda Gu — The Green House
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Hi Deborah,
That would make one hell of a wig wouldn’t it, or maybe just go for hair extensions
) Neck brace included to support the extra weight.
What an amazing feat though, and it shows the versatility of hair too…awesome stuff, not so sure about the coloured spaghetti though, I think I’ll pass on that with my bolognese lol
Hair extentions … why didn’t I think of that! You’d need more than a neck brace to support 430 some pounds of it Colin, haha! Ya, I’ll stick with my Catelli brand of spaghetti with rose sauce myself
I’m not that keen on the hair installation Deborah….but the Stone Steles are very powerful…..I’d like some of those for Christmas please
Kim, you can have some of mine. I still have my hair from my very first haircut. My hair now is just a bit longer than the first cut although I wear my crown of glory versus my natural hair color in the first cut.
When I die, the hair that I have now will be cut off then both will be donated to the Cancer Institute somewhere. Presently my hair is well below my errr, you know.
Great post, Deborah and Hiya Colin!
Fascinating
I’m with you on that one Kim. Hell, no problem, I’ll just give Wenda a call and place my order in advance
Thanks Saboma
I guess I need glasses, I always thought your hair was short.
Thanks Al
Nyoop, me hair is braided to the side in me photo, Deborah. My hair is really long and with it braided tightly to the side, it’s well below my waist.
OK, I went to a site where we’ve spoken before that has an enlarge pic of vous, and yes, I can see where your hair drapes down your left shoulder. Had you never mentioned that I wouldn’t have noticed, it doesn’t really stand out.
haha….you two sound like hairdressers
oops I forgot….you were a hairdresser…Deborah :0
that’s a lovely gesture donating your hair MA….
afraid mines too short…:P
Yes, I even had my own salon downtown for 5 years until I quit the industry for greener pastures with another business.
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Woahh.. that’s amazing. I’ve been a hairstylist for 15 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.
Inspiring art and great blog.
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This is pretty amazing it has to be said – things like this wouldn’t even occur to most people!