Chrystl Rijkeboer

installation art and objects made of human hair

The theme of my work is astonishment about the life of the human being.
Key point is the lifecycle: from birth ‘the innocence’, till development to maturity ‘ the quilt’. Into my works I emphasize the concepts: influencing and consciousness rising.
The reason why I work with human hair is that hair has symbolic significance: beauty, strength, health, attraction, etc. The moment it is separated from the human all these factors turn around, hair is considered dirty, unsavoury and dead. Human hair is extremely individual material, which I felt into cloth or spin into thread, the texture of my sculptures.

Hair is an important indicator of our live. It shows how we feel, physical and emotional. But hair is more. Every hair contains our personal ‘ genetic image’.
My former work was about the emotional values of our hair. The last work is about hair and identity, about our genes and DNA-manipulation.
These works discuss the vulnerability of the human. They refer to the effort to reconstruct, improve and manipulate the human, the quest for ever-lasting beauty and health.

Project kloone4000
Research for reactions at working with human material.

Through advertisement at www.markplaats.nl, the neighborhood paper and request at local hairdressers, I have called on people to bring or send me their hair.

I investigated what kind of reactions ‘working with human hair’ evokes. I always get my hair through a Haarlem local hairdresser and have no idea about the knowledge of their costumers; do they know I use their hair? And how they feel about me using it for the creation of sculptures. I only know reactions at exhibitions, which are very diverse.
This project was a good opportunity to step out of my ‘save laboratory' and do this research.
There are many discussions about starting and maintain DNA databases and I wonder if people realize that each hair contains a personal DNA pattern.

Work:
NDA-Baby prototype NO. 1
The ‘designed’ human as an idea of the future.
I spinned the hair into strings from which I crochet a sculpture. This sculpture is a baby, which is literal formed by the twined (by spinning) DNA-strand.

Bio-chemic industry and -research are inextricable connected to our society. All of our raw materials, food supplies are refined and manipulated, what we accepted as normal. But when we think about manipulating livestock (human & animals), we emotional refuse. We cannot predict which will be the consequences of manipulating, refinement or cloning.

I have been working in the studio of gallery Retort 1 day a week (Saturday).

Chrystl Rijkeboer currently lives and works in Haarlem. She finished her studies at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.
Her work has been shown in Haarlem, The Hague and Rotterdam and abroad: Barcelona, Hawaii, Denver, Ottawa and Toronto.

website: www.rijkeboer.com