Decomposition 2025

Deep within human memory, hair carries an unseen energy—woven with silent stories, embedded with traces of transformation, loss, and resilience. In Arab culture, hair has long been a witness to rituals, a medium for expressing grief, strength, and the passage from one state to another.

“Dissolution” is not merely the act of cutting hair; it is a ritual of farewell, a symbolic gesture of transition. The title draws from the Islamic concept of tahallul, the moment of release from a sacred state, signifying a shift into something new—just as cutting hair can embody liberation, mourning, or renewal.

The work evokes the story of a woman who, upon losing her brother, severed her braids and hung them on a tree—a suspended bridge between earth and sky, grief and transformation, memory and continuity. The braids dangle in the void, lingering like fragments of remembrance, silent prayers sent into the unseen.

“Dissolution” explores the profound relationship between body and spirit, between what we leave behind and what we carry forward. It is an inquiry into the moment of transformation—where hair, once an intimate part of the self, becomes a relic of the past, a testament to what was, and an invocation for renewal.