Hair

I started to pull out and shave the hair off my body when I was a junior high school student. I chose some tweezers recommended by a friend, and used a shaver I borrowed from my sister. It was hard and painful to pull out the hairs. So I made secret rule - to pull out 7 hairs per day, or any other number that can be divided by 7. The number seven is important within family, and is special to me since there are seven members in my family.

From my first time until now, it has grown into a full-on obsession.... An almost ritualistic habit. I get excited when I find strangely shaped hair. And I relax during the process of removing them - almost like a type of therapeutic meditation that clears my mind. On the other hand, I become restless if I haven't removed any hair for an extended period of time. And if for whatever reason I’m not able to remove them, I’m forced to control the urge by choosing a long sleeve shirt over a sleeveless shirt to hide them. So very stressful...

Coming from Japan, I feel that the habit of hair removal is on a much larger scale with people (especially women) who live here. I also observed that in Japan, one can find many more unusual and a wider variety of tools for hair removal than in Europe. I loved collecting the tools that I found European countries and Japan. To comparing those tools, I realized that how much Japanese people are obsessed with plucking or shaving their hair. I am sure all people have their reasons for using a particular tool. Each of my tools has it’s own story.

Within the project, I want to investigate how the culture of hair removal functions in Japanese society, and how it has shaped my daily behavior, habits, and obsessions. Within the project, I asked myself these questions: How can one analyze and understand one's own motives of a particular habit? How is the relationship of people maintaining the privacy of their bodies being shaped by society and aggressive products advertisement? What about the definition of the nature and being natural?

Through my project, I will be pleased and most appreciative if you have taken a bit of time to consider about your own hair 'what you will do with it? How you handle dealing with it? and why?

Behind the curtain

Clean the garden = Grooming

Is it necessary?

My lovely tools portrait

Targets

and more...    - targets" Summer of 2017 -

Victims