“A Hair Breadth From Usability” at Galerie Eric Mouchet in Paris showcases French artist Isabelle Plat’s human hair sculptures and drawings. Confronting yet strangely intriguing, Plat’s hair works aim to shock the viewer into awakening the viewer’s perceptions of the “consequences of individual gestures.”Plat’s art revives a tradition popularized by the Victorians of using human hair, which for thousands of years has been a symbol of life, but also of love and loss, to create items of sentiment and mourning such as rings, necklaces, brooches – a trend that vanished in the mid 1920s.Using hair collected from hairdressing salons, which she defines as an “object of belonging” and identifies as a “living material,” Plat says that she is attempting to “understand the relationship we maintain with our environment, including other humans and the planet itself.”The title of the exhibition is a reference to the concept of “sculture d’usage” (usable sculpture) which was developed by the artist many years ago as a way of disrupting the viewer’s perception of her works through the addition of an additional layer of usability.“A Hair Breadth From Usability” continues her engagement with the concept of usage to question the connection of the body to the world, adding yet another layer of disruption by working with a human-derived organic material.The sculptural works in the exhibition take a wide variety of forms including a boot, a bra, a skirt, a bracelet, and even a brain-shaped carpet. There are also a number of “drawings” on silk of different body parts which are also created using human hair.“A Hair Breadth From Usability” is at Galerie Eric Mouchet in Paris until January 16, 2016
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