Hair Work [Haarwerk], 2019
“Hair Work” reveals intimate images of the daily work of barbers in Hamburg, Germany, accompanied by quotes from them about their lives. The camera shows their professional practice, their technique and their workplace. All of these barbers and a large part of their clientele are of foreign origin, notably from the same countries that originated the recent waves of mass immigration to Germany and to the rest of central Europe that occurred at the end of the past decade. They are Turks, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Arabs and Africans who today constitute a considerable presence in Germany’s second largest city.
“Hair Work” was commissioned by curator Roger Buergel for his latest exhibition “Mobile Worlds or the Museum of our Transcultural Present”, produced by the Johann Jakobs Museum in Zurich and by the Museum of Arts and Crafts (MKG) in Hamburg, Germany.
Dias & Riedweg were inspired by one of the pieces in the collection of the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts that shows a 19th century box with embroidery and braids made with human hair to research how the hair-related culture in the museum surroundings manifests itself in the present day. Just as the braided blond hair in the museum’s collection is a cultural document of life in the region during the 19th century, the video by Dias & Riedweg is inscribed as a document of the new multicultural reality of Germany’s second largest city in the beginning of the 21st century.
