Braids

Braids is a site-specific installation composed of oversized black braids made from braided agricultural-grade black plastic sheets and metal wire. Stretching across spaces, the work evokes both a living body and a wasp nest, creating a forceful physical presence charged with layered symbolic meaning.

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The work draws on Kurdish and Middle Eastern cultural understandings of hair as a site of identity, beauty, restriction, grief, and resistance. In many traditional contexts, women’s hair is heavily policed, controlled, or hidden, becoming tied to shame, discipline, and social power. In Braids, the braid is reclaimed as a public monument — unruly, visible, and defiant.

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Made from discarded plastic material, the installation also engages environmental violence and pollution. The synthetic body of the braid reflects the spread of waste and the suffocation of both land and life through disposable materials. By transforming plastic into a monumental woven form, the work brings together ecological crisis and the politics of the feminine body.

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For Kurdish women, the braid also carries histories of strength, mourning, and survival. It can signify pride, inherited memory, and resistance, but also pain and humiliation. In patriarchal societies, cutting or shaving a woman’s hair can become a violent gesture of punishment and erasure. Braids holds these tensions together, treating hair as both intimate matter and political symbol.

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First exhibited at Lyse Netter Festival in Moss, Norway, the installation extended over 1088 meters of braided material, creating an overwhelming sculptural presence that speaks to visibility, memory, environmental destruction, and collective resistance.