A kind of display (2015 – ongoing)

“They shall not make any baldness on their heads, nor shave the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh.” Leviticus 21:5

“It’s just a beard! That’s the only thing that everybody is talking about. It’s just facial hair. Thank you for your attention, but I don’t think it’s that interesting.” Conchita Wurst

A kind of display is a collection of images about beards, which are confronted and processed in order to address a spectrum of social issues, some directly political in motive, some vaguely utopian and some chronicling specific historical events.
The project started when we found some articles about beard implants in Turkey, a country where such practice is common among adult males, because mustaches are a symbol of a social status. The initial interest for this combination of aesthetic surgery and cultural values became a structured project when we compared it with the fashion trend that spread out in the West: effectively, beard is a common character among human beings (stressed in male individuals), the appearance or disappearance of which marks all human history and crosses different cultures. It has always been subjected to a shifting range of cultural values, epitomizing wisdom, virility, strength, health, and more often becoming the main feature of archetypical figures, like the enemy or the warrior.
A kind of display is conceived as an installation and a performance in which the exhibited objects are different derivations of the photographic process, deeply connected with the possibilities and the everyday practices made available by the developments of this mean of expression.

The project was made possible by the support of Les Rencontres des Arles Festival, TreeD Filaments, SDM s.r.l., Mockup s.r.l., Dscan Global Survey and Nicola Pireddu.