hair memory

Dance on screen -  in progress;
Concept and production: Cinzia Schincariol
Artists: Cinzia Schincariol and Alison Currie
Photography and videography: Sam Oster
Sound: Sascha Budimski

HAIR MEMORY is along term trilogy project which aims to explore the rituality around hair. It started with a simple and casual promise between Alison and myself: “I will wait for you to cut my hair, when you are back from London”. Hair had always been somehow important in growing up and in my relationship with my mother, but since that moment, my interest around the cultural, social and spiritual meaning of hair has been significantly growing. The following components emerged as a possibility:

- dance on screen: aimed to capture a rite of passage fulfilled in 2017 by weaving 7 years worth of my hair to an hourglass shaped sculpture and cutting myself free from it. This ritual aimed to address a cry out for disentanglement around motherhood, illness, trauma, sense of belonging, memory and identity, The footage filmed in the stunning landscapes of South Australia is currently under a scrupulous process of editing.

- live performance: As Italian/ Australian, I am urged to deal with the collective grief from the 2019 Australian bushfire, and from the Covid 19 related traumatic Italian death toll. The despair caused by the impossibility of being close to the dying human and nature (to not be burnt or infected) is something to me so profound that I question our ability (as a society) to deal with this. Inspired by the teaching and experiences gathered in Western Australian Aboriginal communities where hair is a sacred item and used to deal with grief, there is a desire to push the material used and gathered through the filming to find a possibility of using hair as a way to process collective grief, within myself and with others.

- community engagement: This component is inspired by some of my finding during the research for the video research. In particular I have been incredibly touched by an event: in May 2004, Rabbis announced that Jewish women are banned from wearing wigs made with hair coming from Hindu temples. Bon fires started in communities to burn hair that women were not allowed to wear any longer. For some of these women, such wigs were their most valuable belonging. And those wigs held the transformation process of those women that in deep faith, underwent the rite of passage of shaving. Is still unclear how this component will develop but is very clear that many stories around hair need to be told. Here are some:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlZ1SWLBfPE

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/14/nyregion/rabbis-rules-and-indian-wigs-stir-crisis-in-orthodox-brooklyn.html

https://www.hinduismtoday.com/blogs-news/hindu-press-international/jews-burn-wigs-made-of-hair-from-india/4035.html

I would like to acknowledge the Kaurna people as the traditional owners of the land where this project was filmed.
I respect and acknowledge their spiritual connection as the custodians of their land and that their cultural heritage beliefs are still important for the living people of today. I pay respect to elders, past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded.