HAIR CLUB is an interdisciplinary, research-based art collective whose work dives into the topic of hair in culture. Co-founded by Suzanne Gold (US), Michal Lynn Shumate (US/IT), and Kelly Lloyd (US/UK) in 2014, HAIR CLUB puts forth a socially engaged art historical practice which embraces the many associations of hair in culture – art, popular culture, religion, literature, history, politics, and more – as well as the material of hair itself as it finds its way into artists’ practices across the globe.
In celebration of ten years of research, writing, publication, and gathering in community with others around hair, HAIR CLUB invites the NKF community to join them in a conversation event they call a Hair Salon, to discuss the many resonances that hair might have in creative practice and individual ritual, and hair’s symbolic implications across daily life. During the course of their residency, HAIR CLUB will be laying out their many years of materials within the studio space, using the time to discuss the past decade of collaboration, and thinking about directions for the future. They are hopeful that the conversations had with artists and writers in Stockholm will lead to future interdisciplinary collaborations.
HAIR CLUB will also be launching a small publication called HAIR and WAITING at Index during the course of their residency in Stockholm. Riffing on the idea of hair and waiting and thinking about hair as a time-based medium together with Stockholm-based artist/curator Erika Råberg, HAIR CLUB has created a publication centered around the idea of the surprise encounter, and hopes to sneak the publication into many waiting spaces across cities internationally.
NARRATIVE BIOGRAPHY // 2014-present
HAIR CLUB is an interdisciplinary, research-based art collective whose work is centered around the multivalent topic of hair in culture. Co-founded by Suzanne Gold, Kelly Lloyd, and Michal Lynn Shumate, HAIR CLUB is a platform for discussion, dialogue, research, exhibition, and creative writing that was initially recognized by the Shapiro Center for Collaborative Research Grant (SAIC) in 2014 and grew under the auspices of the Propeller Fund Grant, a joint endeavor of Threewalls and Gallery 400 in Chicago, IL in 2015. HAIR CLUB has since expanded its research and methodological approach to narrativizing hair through the expansive, associative lens of culture (inclusive of art, literature, history, popular culture, identity, politics, and religion). HAIR CLUB has presented research at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Early in 2020, HAIR CLUB paneled at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago, IL as part of “Material Stories: Hair,” an exhibition that presented the divisive and confounding hair-based work of Chinese artist Gu Wenda, among others. A chapter in the volume Socially Engaged Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Theory and Practice of Art History (ed. Cindy Persinger & Azar Rejaye, Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) posits HAIR CLUB as a case study for socially-engaged art historical praxis and introduces the unique creative and inclusive methodology of the burgeoning interdisciplinary academic discipline of “Hair Studies.” HAIR CLUB was invited by Stockholm-based curator Erika Råberg to celebrate ten years of collaboration with the Nordic Art Association (NKF) in December 2024, where they will launch the collaborative publication HAIR + WAITING with INDEX, the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation.
Suzanne Gold is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator in Baltimore, MD, USA. She lectures on the sacred space of hair across culture and religion, gay hair and respectability politics, and the global hair market for HAIR CLUB and teaches Art History at the Baltimore School for the Arts. She manages the substack Pull out your own Hair, which features essays and autoethnographic writing about hair in art and culture, and which was recognized as a Substack notable newsletter in July 2023. In 2018-2019, Suzanne presented HAIR CLUB’s work and research at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art Salon Series (Salon 33: Hair) in NYC, and the Baltimore Jewelry Center (Baltimore, MD). Her first book of poems and illustrations called ALLTALK was published by Meekling Press (Chicago, IL) in 2022. She is currently the inaugural Writer in Residence at the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. www.suzanne-gold.com
Kelly Lloyd is a transdisciplinary artist who focuses on issues of representation and knowledge production, and prioritizes public-facing collaborative research. Lloyd received a dual M.F.A. in Painting and M.A. in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 2008. Lloyd has recently held solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy Schools (London), Crybaby (Berlin), Bill’s Auto (Chicago), Demo Room (Aarhus), and Dirty House (London) for which she won the Art Licks Workweek Prize. Lloyd was the Starr Fellow at the Royal Academy Schools during the 2018/19 school year, and is currently studying at The University of Oxford's Ruskin School of Art and Wadham College for her DPhil in Practice-Led Fine Art with support from an All Souls-AHRC Graduate Scholarship and an Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Programme Studentship; and lecturing at the Reading School of Art. Lloyd lives and works in London. www.klloyd.com
Michal Lynn Shumate is an educator and researcher based in Bomarzo whose practice draws from the history and theory of domestic space and the decorative arts. She is a PhD student in Cultural Heritage at the Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca and her current research is focused on the visual culture of nineteenth-century Rome, with projects ranging from the restoration of medieval houses, to the use of historicism in decorative programs, to the cartographic nature of domestic inventories. Michal Lynn worked, studied, and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before relocating to Italy.
www.imtlucca.it/michallynn.shumate