Hairy Styles

Hughes Joseph received a grant for the development of new work. Hairy Styles is an artist publication that transforms a single day of successive haircuts into a generative artwork. Split portraits and modular texts can be endlessly recombined, allowing readers to construct thousands of temporary identities. The project explores how appearance shapes identity, and how a publication can become an active artwork rather than simply a container for images and text.

Hughes’' practice begins with existing systems rather than blank pages. He looks for the cultural rules embedded in familiar objects, spaces and behaviours, then reorganises them into artworks that invite people to see — and participate in — them differently. Put simply: he disorients the ordinary.