Hair and Earth:
to start from a new collective zero degree.

The hair cut, which I theorized eight years ago, with this performance of poetic density indicates the rebirth that is accomplished through the body of the individual as a collective ritual in our tormented everyday life.

Unlike many of my other performances, this artwork was conceived of a short duration (about an hour and a half, with a much longer preparation) to sever the inexpressible and the pain of existence, regenerate the ties with the essence life and nature, seeking a new representation of the self and rediscovering a new freedom of existence.

Evoking the African origins of the gesture, which usually ended by burying the cut hair underground, I worked on a mound of dark and fragrant earth. Voiceless, my body transformed into a silent cry: naked, completely painted white and with my hair stretched out until it reached the ceiling beams of the room like in a spider’s web (figuration of the mother) I cut my own hair to free me from the tangle of constraints, conventions, obsessions, abuses, anxieties…

It was not an action of physical and metaphorical annulment, of cancellation of femininity and its social role, but a painful gesture of rebirth, to instigate my fellow human beings to start again from a zero degree of life. It is a first rite for all, exorcised through the body of only one person.

Performance
Milan, Cassina Projects
21 April 2023

On the occasion of the opening of my solo show Chimera

Credits:

Hair Giampaolo Gori & Laura Marchesi
Bodypaiting Cecilia Olmedi & Nicole Berardi
Special thanks to the whole Cassina Projects’ team

Photo Letizia Mugri