FROM TUESDAY 18 SEPTEMBER 2012 TO SUNDAY 14 JULY 2013

• West mezzanine
• Collections ticket

CURATOR 

• Yves Le Fur, Director of the Heritage and Collections Department at the musée du quai Branly

around the exhibition

visits, catalogue and events related to the exhibition

prologue: blacks/whites  

Ancient, modern and contemporary European busts, but also non-European busts: their juxtaposition invites you to appreciate the great variety of hairstyles which characterise different cultures.

In this ethnic gallery bronzes and marbles, black and white, make up a chequerboard displaying multiple combinations and viewpoints. Busts of Louis XIV and Marie Josephine of Savoy from the National Museum of the Châteaux of Versailles and Trianon stand next to busts of black and Chinese women, works by Charles Cordier, from the collections of the National Museum of Natural History.

trifles?

Following a course similar to that of life, the exhibition begins with the trifles and carefreeness of beginnings, driven by whim and desire. But are these mere trifles? Is there not something more? This care, this searching, this fickleness, are these not also a sign of vitality which can overcome the banal and ordinary to escape from ugliness?

The exhibition moves from the sparkling world of western depictions towards those of other cultures. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, reproductions, objects and multimedia formats express the impermanence of these images, which are held out to us like mirrors revealing how we are managing our appearance and our destiny.

This first part of the exhibition covers three areas: Metamorphoses and permutations, The colours of the norm, Seduction. The juxtaposition of a great diversity of works and objects reveals to us the different physical and symbolic forms that hair can take: series of photographs by Samuel Fosso and J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, installation by Annette Messager, Rois Francs painted by Jean-Louis Bézard, but also photographs of actresses and singers by Sam Lévin, painting by Ingres, Boilly, Charles Maurin and Jean-Jacques Henner.

The power of hair

Hair care in non-European cultures similarly reflects issues of self-awareness and of seduction, whether it is a question of extensions or of decoration mixed with natural materials and skilful use of colour. 

Hair which is part of souvenir objects is laden with significance which evokes the memory or power of a person, especially in societies which practise trophy taking or head hunting. Hair becomes a material laden with the powers of its former owner and is worn as a powerful adornment. Trophies, scalps and other things are believed to stir up an energy which is most usually associated with a culture’s fertility, with the group’s prosperity and with peaceful relations with the Ancestors.

This last section comprises four parts: Finery, Powerful adornments and magic charms, Trophies, Ancestors and the Beyond. Chosen mainly from the collections of the Musée de quai Branly, some hundred objects made of hair, from the simple to the spectacular, make those vanished bodies seem increasingly substantial. The issue then becomes a tension between living presence and remains, disappearance and survival, frivolity and death.