Artist Liyen Chong has spent much of the last five years growing her very long, thick black hair and then embroidering with it.
"Often it was with a single strand, and size-10 sharp needles," she said.
She then started using the hair of friends, and said she found herself eyeing likely heads
of hair on strangers, especially long red hair.
Chong finished her time as Tylee Cottage artist-in-residence last week, by giving an evening talk at the Sarjeant Gallery. She will have a show there next year.
She said people identified powerfully with their hair, and there were taboos about it in many cultures. Victorians made keepsakes with the hair of departed loved ones, and ancient Chinese embroidered pictures of the Buddha using hair.
For Chong, using her own hair for embroidery linked her with her Chinese culture. She's third-generation Chinese, grew up in Malaysia, spent a year in China at 15 and then migrated to New Zealand with her parents.
Much of her art practice has been about affirming her Chinese roots in her new country.
Her hair embroideries were often of body parts - skeletons, the brain, the lungs - or Chinese dragons or butterflies copied from computer images.
Each took 30 to 40 hours of intense work bending over a tiny piece of fabric.
She titled two butterfly embroideries "Am I a woman who dreamt I was a butterfly?" and "Am I a butterfly who dreamt I was a woman?"
The notion of self was different in Chinese culture, she said.
"In the West the notion of self is very much independent. in Eastern culture you are defined by people around you."
Last year she had all her long hair cut off, and said it was such a relief.
"Trying to sleep with long hair isn't fun."
Now about to start a new artist residency in Titirangi, she is ready for a new medium.
