Metamorphoses, Wenda Gu (born 1955)

Influenced by the tradition of Chinese calligraphy, Wenda Gu transforms human hair and glue into textile-like panels adorned with writing and characters invented by Gu that frustrate the reader. The work’s title, Metamorphoses, suggests transformation and change; hair transforms into script and language becomes a set of unreadable signs. By muddling both the hair as physical material produced by humans and language as a conceptual marker of humanity, Gu looks to a future in which our stratified human society transforms into a unified whole.