Human hair transformed into art for public exhibition

Fine Art undergraduate Jessica Lewis collected hair from 10 of her friends and several bags from salons in Nottingham to create three installations for the 2024 art and design Graduate Festival.

The 21-year-old washed the hair she had collected with shampoo and conditioner before transforming it into artwork which aims to draw extreme reactions from gallery visitors.

“People found it eerie and disturbing, and I thought ‘I’d really like to push this’,” said Jessica, from Bourton in North Dorset, who is studying BA Fine Art in the Nottingham School of Art & Design.

“I was living in a house of four girls and there was hair everywhere. I thought there was something so beautiful in it, but it was on the floor discarded.

“Other people saw it as disgusting clogging up their drains and hair brushes, but I saw a real beauty and wanted to use it to make art.”

Jessica spent three months making the art, with up to six hours a day working on it.

The hair collected includes curly hair, pink hair, bleached hair, natural healthy hair, red, brown, blonde and black hair.

After washing the hair she would comb it and let it dry on fabric. Other hair she would leave unwashed and in clumps.

Jessica’s art also includes paper which she made from used paper towels, egg containers, egg shells, receipts, dog hair, dried leaves, onion skins, dust, water, cardboard and glass.

“It’s more about the material and disgust,” says Jessica, who wants to work in art therapy after graduating.

“There’s a lot of feelings people have with their hair. It creates identities, people see it as beautiful when it’s growing from their scalp, but when it’s cut on the floor it can disgust them.

“There are people who have never met me but part of them is now in the exhibition.

“I personally never found any disgust with it. It didn’t bother me cleaning drains. When I saw how it bothered other people I found it interesting. Their reactions and mine were such a counter-balance.

“When people enter the space there’s a lot of discussion. I’ve heard a few people say ‘oh my gosh it’s touched me’.

“Some of my friends haven’t wanted to go in at all. As you walk by and it brushes you, and people dart out the way. I am very excited to see how people respond when it opens to the public.

“A few people have said it’s quite elegant, but that’s definitely the minority. I think it’s transformed something that disgusting into something that’s beautiful.”

Jessica’s art is currently on display for the 2024 Graduate Festival. The exhibition is completely free and open to the public.

Fine Art senior lecturer Geoffrey Litherland said: “Jessica has shown how something which repulses people like discarded hair found in drains can be transformed into artwork that is fit for public exhibition.

“She is using the material as a way to provoke diverse reactions and in doing so inviting us all to think why some people find dead hair disgusting, whereas others regard it as a thing of beauty.”