source: antipastotv

“A bit of skirt, she’s the one sold her hair.” Lyric from Le miserables – lovely ladies. Fantine sold her head of gold to clothe her daughter Cosette. And that was 150 years ago.

Today, the hair trading business may not be as active as it was in the past, yet it still exists. Hair is mostly supplied for making hair extensions and wigs, except in the case of one client—artist Helen Pynor. She is a customer of a London-based hair dealer who buys hair from women all over the world. She ties hairs together and knits them into forms. There are garments, feet, hands and even interior organs too.

“Whose hair is it?” she wonders. “In fact, who would want to sell their hair?” Most of us might like to think that it belonged to a girl who wanted it cut to forget a boyfriend, or a hippie who wanted to say goodbye to a rebellious youth, but the truth is probably much more disturbing. Most women who sell their hair do so out of necessity. They live in poor circumstances and it provides an additional way to generate income. So what are their stories? Likely, they will remain anonymous, mysterious and forever unknown.

The act of knitting single strands is painstaking, meditative and demanding, requiring intense concentration and a calm mind. “If my mind is agitated I inevitably end up in a hair tangle.” The flexibility of hair seems to suggest the expandable possibility of time. She picks up the bits and pieces of memories, fragmented time and disseminated identity and reassembles them into ghostly images. Each strand is emotionally charged, presents a narrative, and offers the chance to travel through time.

Originally trained as a biologist, Pynor’s thirst for artistic expression is firmly grounded in science. Well-versed in Western and non-Western science, including anatomy and biology, it seems as if every molecule or particle of knowledge has found some new symbolic meaning in her art form, whether it’s exploring a pair of feet, a hand, lungs or a heart.

Hair is delicate and strong, living and dead, natural yet cultural, and sensual yet repulsive. Every thin strand of hair seems to shoulder the heaviness of history and tells us a story of its own.

“What exactly is hair?”