Speakers

Video Contributors

• HAIR CLUB

  HAIR CLUB is a collaborative, research-based initiative exploring the multivalent subject of Hair in our wider culture. HAIR CLUB was founded by three graduate students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Suzanne Gold, Kelly Lloyd, and Michal Lynn Shumate.

• Raffaele Mollica

  Raffaele Mollica is a master wig-maker whose flagship hand-crafted wig, now known as the “Ralf,” has been celebrated in publications such as Vogue, The New York Times, and People, among others, and on television on both HBO and PBS. Having emigrated from Sicily in 1956, he attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. He subsequently broke into the fashion scene and became the in-house wig-maker for Vidal Sassoon, Kenneth and then Elizabeth Arden. In 1975 he founded Raffaele Mollica, Inc., a small, family-oriented business dedicated to making hand-crafted custom wigs and hairpieces for both local customers as well as serving a global clientele.

• Studio Swine

  Studio Swine (Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers) is a collective established in 2011 by Azusa Murakami (JP) and Alexander Groves (UK). Their work straddles between the spheres of sculpture, installations and cinema, blending poetry and research into immersive experiences. The studio adopts an unique approach to each work, drawing on the distinctive resources and vernacular aesthetic of its cultural, historic and economic landscape.

• Tina Lasisi

  Tina Lasisi is a PhD Student in the Jablonski Lab at Penn State University. Tina is interested in the evolution of human phenotypic variation among populations. Her doctoral research will focus on the evolution of human hair variation. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology & Anthropology at the University of Cambridge where she wrote a thesis entitled “Human Hair Diversity: Quantitative Variation in Hair Fibre Shape & Pigmentation”.

• Noliwe Rooks

  Noliwe Rooks, is an author and professor at Cornell University whose work explores race and gender. An interdisciplinary scholar, her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. The author of four books, numerous articles, essays and OpEd’s.

• INFRINGE

  INFRINGE is a platform dedicated to hair culture. Created by Anthony and Pat Mascolo, INFRINGE explores the world of hair across creative disciplines.

• Simon Skinner

  Swedish product designer Simon Skinner has created a collection of afro hair combs that explore the effect of migration on Swedish identity. Called Afropicks, the collection of eight different combs was on show as part of the Hemma Gone Wild exhibition by Swedish Design Moves during this year’s Milan design week.