This hand-made publication (edition of 250) was given away at the Queer Materialities Live! symposium, 14 March 2024 (GSA). The work is the first output of a new interdisciplinary project concerned with abject and celebratory aspects of hair and other materials which are commonly used as hair substitutes. Shit Hair seeks out lost and forgotten hair and gathers the strands into clumps of matter, now repulsive. Images and textures are interwoven with snippets of Agatha Christie’s Third Girl and ‘real’ hair, both human and non-human. The work reconsiders Kristeva’s abjection and its connection with signs of ‘urban femininity’ by entangling disembodied hair ‘scraps’, and drug paraphernalia (evidence of ‘nights out’) to propose that hair might signal both traumatic and ecstatic existences and events of the recent past.

This wee packet of dubious origin could be picked up off the lecture theatre floor and was filled with one or two kinds of something… Just Say No.