Vittoria Soddu and Jeroen Marttin became interested in the hairtrade and its dynamics, and started developing work on this theme in 2010. The interest came from a simple conversation they had.  Vittoria Soddu was considering donating her long hair to a family member.  Jeroen Marttin on the other hand was looking into buying hair because of a medical condition that causes random bald patches.

From this a research project into the hair market has been developed.

We explored television advertising for hair products, and websites like thehairtrader.com and hairbuyer.com where people themselves can buy and sell hair without going through a company – a hair version of eBay. We were fascinated by the aesthetics of the photographs and the texts in the adverts.

“24 inch dark brown braid of natural never dyed, never permed or chemically treated hair. I get compliments everyday and so can you with my hair. I take lots of vitamins and omega 3’s, eat healthy food and don’t smoke or have ever lived in a house with smokers. Beautiful lustre with auburn hints. Will ship once payment has been received and cleared.”

The Haarhandel video Vittoria Soddu and Jeroen Marttin made inspired by the many advertisements.

The more we saw and read, the more we came to recognize a pattern.  On these websites the supply and demand comes from people with very different backgrounds, and there is no origin of hair that is more valuable than another. During our research we came across a trailer for the film Hair India, which is a specific case study within the trade. Hair India focuses on the journey that hair makes from India to Europe and then back to India, an economic cycle all the way from the original source, through its process in the factory, back as a final product to where it came from.

Hair India will be screened at this years IDFA (nov 2010). More information here.

Haarhandel at Nieuwe Vide, 16-05-2010

The Object Lag curated a series of events in Haarlem around the theme of translation, to which we were invited, and decided to involve UK-based make-up and prosthetics artist Ginny Baker to perform a hair transplantation. Ginny took 5 hours to complete the make-up that would present Vittoria as bald.  This was how she arrived at Nieuwe Vide where Ieva Snikersproge (a friend who was interested in our research), was given a hair cut by Ginny and progressively by the audience until she was bald. Ieva’s curls were used as the main material for the realisation of the transplant onto the bald cap, although the audience members were also asked to donate a lock of their hair to contribute to the wig.

The second half of the evening was dedicated to the screening of the documentary “Hair India” by Marco Leopardi and Raffaele Brunetti (2008) and was followed by a discussion.

Concerning the theme proposed to us by The Object Lag, we perceived the concept of the performance as relating to the theme of translation in terms of transformation of the body; the gaining and losing of hair and the value that is given to those two different states. Equally, especially in relation to the issues raised in the film “Hair India”, we saw a loss in translation between the donation of the hair and its transformation into a very valuable consumer product as hair extensions.

(the image in the flyer is by Ginny Baker)

(the documentation of the performance was taken by Jeroen Marttin)