HairScapes
VISUAL RESEARCH
CASE STUDY
ART MEDIATION
PERFORMANCE
INSTALLATION
EDITORIAL SYSTEMS
Hair as Form. Hair as Voice.
Hairscapes is a master’s thesis that stepped outside the classroom and into the city.
Hairscapes began as a question and unfolded into a practice.
A research-led, embodied exploration of African hair as mediation, language, perfomance, and care.
It unfolded through live performances at Theaterplatz in Basel, followed by exhibitions and installations across public and institutional spaces. What began as research became action. What happened in the moment left marks that stayed.
The project moves between performance, installation, and printed matter, capturing both the event itself and what lingers after — gestures, conversations, and traces in space.
Next Generation Archive (HGK)
Performative Cultural Context Mediation
Hairscapes approaches Black hair not as style, but as syntax.
Inspired by African artists such as Laetitia Ky, whose work positions hair as both sculpture and social statement, the project treats hair as a carrier of memory, resistance, care, and collective knowing. It is shaped, braided, worn, and read.
Hair becomes something you encounter, not consume.
This project is grounded in performative cultural context mediation — a practice of learning through presence rather than explanation.
Instead of offering fixed narratives, Hairscapes creates situations.
Instead of teaching from a distance, it invites proximity.
Through movement, colour, spatial interventions, and mediated dialogue, the work proposes new ways of engaging African and African diasporic art — within public space, and in relation to museum systems.
Theaterplatz became a meeting point.
Six performance chapters unfolded across the square, carried by women of colour dressed in bold, intentional colour. Each chapter explored a different register of hair — intimate, political, communal, symbolic.
Braided hair structures appeared as murals around the space, extending the performance beyond the body and into the city. The work ran across three public moments, drawing in the Basel community through curiosity, pause, and conversation.
No tickets. No walls. Just presence.
Theaterplatz became a meeting point.
Six performance chapters unfolded across the square, carried by women of colour dressed in bold, intentional colour. Each chapter explored a different register of hair — intimate, political, communal, symbolic.
Braided hair structures appeared as murals around the space, extending the performance beyond the body and into the city. The work ran across three public moments, drawing in the Basel community through curiosity, pause, and conversation.
No tickets. No walls. Just presence.
Hairscapes responds to what is often missing — context.
It asks how African artworks and lived experiences can be encountered with care, depth, and dignity. It creates room for stories that resist simplification, and for audiences to meet them without instruction.
Seriously meaningful.
Slightly playful.
Always purposeful.