Being Human: Hair, Skin and the Work of Silvia B.

‘Being Human’ explores the ways in which hair and hairlessness is used to define the limits of what is is to be human, with far reaching consequences for matters of race, interpretations of evolutionary theory, and experiences of selfhood. I argue that the power of human hair used in the work of artist Silvia B. lies in the communalities between hair, fur and feathers, that are experienced at psychological and physiological as well as through the abstractions of scientific study and the post-human body. I was invited to write this essay write for a multi-authored book that was published on the occasion of a 20 year retrospective solo show ‘Silvia B. Of Beauty and Doubt’ at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Netherlands, 20 November 2016 - 7 May 2017