Oreet Ashery, Hairoism, 2009-2011
Oreet Ashery
Hairoism

Oreet Ashery (*1966, Israel, UK) is a visual artist who works across established arts institutions and grassroots social contexts. Ashery’s distinct multiplatform projects combine video, performance, sound, assemblage, and writing. The work is situated and expands the remits of contemporary practice. Ashery narrates stories of marginal and precarious identities, combining autoethnography, collective-knowledge, and biopolitical fiction. Ashery was commissioned in 2022 by KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin, to produce a film that will feature some of the highways in and around Jerusalem. In recent years the work questioned how the boundaries between illness; life and death; body and self are affected by digital technologies. Ashery won the Jarman Film Award in 2017 for her web-series Revisiting Genesis and in 2020 she was the recipient of the Turner Prize Bursary for her exhibition Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, at the Wellcome Collection. The exhibition included her newly commissioned film Dying Under Your Eyes, exploring intimate surveillance. In 2019 Ashery published her monograph How We Die Is How We Live Only More So with Mousse publishing, co-edited with George Vasey. Ashery is an Associate Professor of Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.

artist's website: oreetashery.net

As a reflection on Eleanor Antin’s silent movie The King from 1972, which shows the artist transforming herself into her male alter ego, Oreet Ashery has her head shaved in the performance Hairoism. Once she is bald, she takes hair donated to her by the audience and imitates the hairstyles of four famous men – the commander in chief of the Israeli army in the 1950s, Moshe Dayan, the Hamas member Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk, the current Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is notorious for his extreme views, and Yasser Arafat / Ringo Starr.
Throughout this process, the amount of hair on her head increases to fit the hair of the four protagonists, starting with the almost hairless Moshe Dayan and ending with the full beard and the full head of hair of Yasser Arafat / Ringo Starr. In the end, the two assistants taking part in the performance begin gluing more and more hair on Ashery’s body and head.
The performance is documented in 5 Polaroid pictures taken during Ashery’s transformation into a hairy monster. The video consists of found footage of the four public figures.

Courtesy Oreet Ashery

Document media
5 photographs, 4 posters, video: colour, sound, 20:00 min

Issue date
2009-2011

To be seen in
Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 7 October 2011 – 15 January 2012

Tags
be-coming, conflict, de/construct identities, masculinity, metamorphosis, queer/drag, trash, violence

A
Ebtisam Abdulaziz
Marina Abramović
Helena Almeida
Eleanor Antin
Arahmaiani
Malin Arnell
Oreet Ashery
Augusta Atla
Margarita Azurdia
B
Antonia Baehr
Maja Bajević
Anne Bean
Anat Ben-David
Renate Bertlmann
Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz
Nisrine Boukhari
Marijs Boulogne
Tania Bruguera
Nancy Buchanan
Maris Bustamante
C
Cabello / Carceller
Shirley Cameron/ Monica Ross/ Evelyn Silver
Graciela Carnevale
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Ève Gabriel Chabanon
Helen Chadwick
Chicks on Speed
Lygia Clark
Paul Clarke
Mary Coble
Colette
Cooltūristės
Corpus Deleicti
Nieves Correa
Laura Cottingham
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen
D
Katrina Daschner
Vlasta Delimar
Carola Dertnig
Teresa María Díaz Nerio
Disband
Ines Doujak
Orshi Drozdik
Yingmei Duan
Kirsten Dufour
Fabienne Dumont
E
Silvia Eiblmayr
Diamela Eltit
Rose English
VALIE EXPORT
F
F.F.F.F.
Factory of Found Clothes
Esther Ferrer
Les filles Föllen
Rose Finn-Kelcey
Angelika Fojtuch
Simone Forti
Coco Fusco
G
(e.) Twin Gabriel
Regina José Galindo
Anna Bella Geiger
Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin
Patrycja German
Ghazel
Kate Gilmore
Trine Mee Sook Gleerup
H
Mona Hatoum
Lynn Hershman
High Heel Sisters
María Teresa Hincapié
Nan Hoover
I
Icelandic Love Corporation - Gjörningaklúbburinn
Sanja Iveković
J
Elżbieta Jabłońska
Françoise Janicot
Joan Jonas
Anne Jud
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K
Kanonklubben
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Verica Kovacevska
Elena Kovylina
Katarzyna Kozyra
Christina Kubisch
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Verena Kyselka
L
Nicola L
Latifa Laâbissi
Leslie Labowitz
Leslie Labowitz & Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy
Katalin Ladik
Sigalit Landau
Klara Lidén
Kalup Linzy
Natalia LL
Léa Lublin
M
Jumana Manna
Manon
MaraM
María Evelia Marmolejo
Muda Mathis
Dóra Maurer
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Ana Mendieta
Marta Minujín
Fina Miralles
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Charlotte Moorman
Teresa Murak
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N
Narcissister
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Senga Nengudi
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O
Lorraine O'Grady
Itziar Okariz
Yoko Ono
ORLAN
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Funda Özgünaydin
Hannah O’Shea
P
Gina Pane
Letícia Parente
Ewa Partum
Bojana Pejić
Jillian Peña
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Howardena Pindell
Adrian Piper
Mariuccia Pisani
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R
Yvonne Rainer
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S
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Zorka Ságlová
Les Salonnières and Dr. Soley
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Cornelia Schleime
Carolee Schneemann
Rebecca Schneider
Schwarze Schokolade
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Stefanie Seibold & Teresa María Díaz Nerio
Miriam Sharon
Bonnie Ora Sherk
Barbara T. Smith
Cornelia Sollfrank
Antonieta Sosa
Spiderwoman Theater
Annie M. Sprinkle
Sandra Sterle
Gabriele Stötzer
Annika Ström
Melati Suryodarmo
Anna Szwajgier/ Zorka Wollny
T
Jinoos Taghizadeh
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U
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
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Valie Export Society
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The Waitresses
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Nil Yalter
Yeni & Nan