years 0-22

performance + photo installation, 2019

Hair has been a subject of scrutiny for me for as long as I can remember. With the arrival of puberty, I was desperate to remove it from me — I was unhappy with how it made me feel like a man. We are conditioned to associate hairiness with masculinity, and I found that in my realization of a more fluid gender identity, there was a time that I wanted to be without any of my hair at all.

I found that, however, by removing my body and facial hair to appear more, what I considered to be, androgynous, I was nullifying a part of me in the process. My hair is very tied to my Arab background, and I would not want to leave that part of me behind in my quest for self-acceptance. I wanted to perform an action that follows this journey towards finding beauty in me, just the way I am. Going down the grid, year by year, I removed articles of hair from my body as I recalled I had done at that moment in time. I created a calendar of my life with my hair as the marker of record.