Artwork of hair raising curiosity
But the gut reactions that artist Wenda Gu's latest installation provokes aren't because of its size, but its contents: 420 pounds of human hair. A viewer's first impulses are to lean forward and scrutinize the swirling, flattened locks; stealthily sniff (it doesn't smell); and fight the urge to touch it — and perhaps quickly recoil.
Sophomore Julian Ng has spent a lot of time with "united nations: the green house," which hangs just feet from the information desk where he works. Part of his job involves handing out brochures on the artwork and explaining that the unrecognizable green lettering spells the words "educations" and "advertises" superimposed on each other.
Ng says viewer reactions fall into two camps: the freaked out and the fascinated.
"A lot of people don't understand that it's hair," he said. When they do, "they get really freaked out."
Then again, "I've seen a lot of people try to look closely to see different hairs," he said.
Maybe they're looking for a piece of themselves.
Dartmouth's Hood Museum commissioned Gu to create art in unexpected places. Museum director Brian Kennedy said placing "the green house" — one level above 1930s-era murals by Mexican painter Jose Clemente Orozco — was intentional.
"We've ... created this symmetry between an artist who was critiqued as an atheist and a communist, who was neither, but from the Mexican Revolution in the '20s, and then an artist who came from communist and atheistic China, you know, but is neither," Kennedy said.
The banner's "green house" title and green lettering symbolize not just Dartmouth, whose nickname is "the Big Green," but money. Gu's unconventional medium and his message — that education and capitalism are inseparable — have drawn mixed responses since the unveiling in June.
There's confusion:
"I know it probably has some other meaning," said 20-year-old history and Spanish major Laura Sayler. "When I think of it, I don't think of that other meaning. I just think of, like, hair."
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