FACE-ADE: THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE

Who lives behind these walls? FACE-ADE: THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE is an interactive installation which transforms a traditional home facade from an opaque, private threshold into a translucent skin and kinetic wall ‘skin’. It is embedded with repurposed hair waste of diverse color, texture, race, gender and generation, sourced from New York City hair salons. Invoking the ‘facade’ people show in public, through the intimate, regenerative layer on skin, it is a bilateral, rotating showcase; an embodied, collective portrait and spatial symbol of tolerance.

The structure includes a first floor, second floor and attic. Blurring the line between architecture and art, pigmented and transparent bio-resin wall studs are contoured with human profiles, which rotate in a wood structure. By rotating the bio-resin component studs, profiles face or turn away from each other, suggesting moments of connection, separation, conversation, or silence. The installation encourages viewers to contemplate concealed narratives and identities behind the facades in our neighborhoods. The unifying wall gradually becomes more transparent, symbolizing a gradual revelation of lives hidden behind social and spatial barriers. By standing on both sides of the installation, seen through hair embedded components, it will seem as if visitors are wearing the hair of others. FACE-ADE is about thresholds, borders, visibility, and coexistence. How do we see ourselves in others?