Romy Pocztaruk's solo show Mega Hair is part of Zip'Up, the program occupying the upper room of Zipper Galeria. It brings together sculptures made of concrete and synthetic fiber, an industrial material used in hair extensions. The installation employs weaving techniques specific to beauty salons: long strands wrap around concrete blocks, hang from the wall to the floor, and, in some pieces, thick braids function as a structural element, supporting stacked blocks.
Over nearly two decades, Pocztaruk has built a body of work dedicated to the traces of failed projects. Her photographs documented what remained of Fordlândia, the city Henry Ford erected in the Amazon in the 1920s. The installation Bombrasil (2017) reconstructed the memory of the secret nuclear program of the Brazilian military dictatorship. In an interview early in her career, the artist described her interest in ruins: "I'm fascinated by the meaning they hold for cities. I think it's an interesting way to look at the past and project the future while, at the same time, reliving feelings and events."
In Mega Hair, the inquiry into ruin shifts from the photographic image to the materiality of the sculptural object. Pocztaruk no longer photographs found ruins. She fabricates her own. The concrete blocks are molded by her, conceived from the outset as fragments. The artificial fiber covering them settles over the structure and imposes its own logic: the hair weighs down, yields to gravity, spreads across the floor. The concrete, in certain pieces, depends on the braid to remain standing. The functions are inverted. What should be cosmetic takes on the structural role; what should be structural reveals vulnerability.
The title names precisely what is seen. "Mega hair" is the popular term for the hair-lengthening procedure using woven-in fiber. Pocztaruk uses the same material and the same technique, but replaces the human head with concrete blocks. The body remains absent, as in the photographs, present only in the trace of a gesture that belongs to it: the act of braiding and applying.
In the critical text accompanying the exhibition, Renato Rezende observes that the sculptures of Mega Hair propose "a point of incidence and demonstration." The concrete blocks take on the lightness of hair fiber, which is not natural and need not be. Organic and inorganic matter cease to be opposites. For Rezende, "culture would not be merely a second nature; it would be the only nature possible for the contemporary person."
Download PDF: critical text by Renato Rezende
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Zip'Up is a Zipper Galeria project created in 2011 — one year after the gallery opened — dedicated to new artists and experimental curatorial work, with an emphasis on authorial processes, risk-taking propositions, and critical debate. Running on an ongoing basis, the program receives, selects, mentors, and hosts exhibition projects that occupy the gallery's upper room, broadening the dialogue between emerging practices and a specialized public.