Artist talk with Ngozi Schommers (artist, Bremen) and Kea Wienand (art historian, University of Oldenburg) as part of the lecture series "Unruly Hair – From Disobedience to Agency. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Children's Media".

Location: Technical University of Darmstadt, room: S101/A4, Karolinenplatz 5, 64289 Darmstadt
Online participation via Zoom: LINK
Language: German
 

Abstract:
Hair plays a significant role in Ngozi Schommers’ artistic practice. In various works—including drawings, paintings, cut-outs, and installations—she explores the sensory qualities of this material, its cultural connotations, and historical hairstyles. The legacies of European colonialism and racist attributions to Afro hair are inevitably present in her work. In a conversation between the artist Ngozi Schommers and the art and cultural studies scholar Kea Wienand, the focus will be on how Schommers negotiates her own experiences in her art and counters derogatory stereotypes with the diverse traditions of women’s hair art, including those of her country of origin, Nigeria. Through the artist’s reflections on the histories of female creativity and care upon which her art is built, it becomes clear to what extent her work is not only aesthetically compelling but also acts as a form of resistance in a decolonial and feminist sense.

About the lecture series: 

From dust-free shoes to a neatly combed head, the “well-groomed” child becomes the focal point of discursive negotiations surrounding contemporary ideals of hygiene education and virtue. Unruly (children’s) hair, on the other hand, reflects a tension between praiseworthy cleanliness and reprehensible vanity, a tension that is culturally, historically, and regionally coded. In contemporary art and literature, unruly hair can be portrayed as a symbol of self-empowerment, but also of exclusion. These depictions continue to reflect social taboos, particularly when (female) body hair is addressed. When unruly hair is portrayed as untamed, diverse, and independent, viewers are invited to rethink beauty: as something that is linked to diversity, texture, and resistance itself. In this lecture series, national and international experts will shed light on the multifaceted aesthetics and semantics of (children’s and adolescents’) hair as depicted in stories and artistic imagery from the perspectives of cultural studies and literary studies.

Participants are expected to productively and critically engage with the subject matter and to be willing to actively participate in the discussions.

The lecture series will take place during the 2026/27 winter semester and is open to students from all disciplines at TU Darmstadt, Goethe University Frankfurt, and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, as well as to the interested public. 

The lecture series is part of the Strategic Alliance of the Rhine-Main Universities (RMU) and is funded by the RMU Teaching Funding for Teaching.