• Portraits + Dialogues
  • Portraits + Dialogues
  • Portraits + Dialogues

ART + CULTURE: Naia del Castillo explores themes of intimacy and isolation with figures encased in hair

Images: Naia del Castillo
Words: Emma de Clercq

Naia del Castillo’s series Portraits depicts figures wrapped in their own hair. Stripped of a human gaze, they seem to become inanimate objects, emotionless and static. “The subjects appear with the most animal aspect of the body, the hair, covering the part that shows their rational aspect, the face, or the gaze”, the artist says.

Whereas Portraits seeks to isolate the subject through hair, in Dialogues it binds two figures together. Del Castillo describes this merging of two figures as “symbolic of the union of two beings, the idea of complete intimacy, but at the same time, of complete dependence and isolation”. The conjoined figures face inwards, representing the private, insular nature of relationships, and the idea of disconnection from the outside world.

  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR