Locks of Love: a performance art (2008)

How it all started was that when I sojourned in Japan for three months, a Japanese friend Asami invited me to cut her hair for her donation. This was an honor; instead, I decided to invite her to come to the festival in Thailand to be part of my creative performance at the Asiatopia International performance art festival.

In my slightly mischievous performance art, I invited the audience to participate in an interactive "play".

In the opening, I cut a piece of my hair to create a brush. Then I chose a first observer in the audience to cut a small piece of her hair and invited her to dip in ink with my hairbrush and write something on the rice roll paper. The person then taped her piece of hair on the rice paper.

Then I handed the scissors to the person and gestured toward the audience to choose the next person. The person chose another person to cut his/her hair. Then the next person taped his/her piece of hair on the paper, wrote something, and received the scissors for the next hapless person.

During this performance, this process became a bit wilder and wilder. A person sometimes would chase a running friend and cut a big piece of hair. Many of the chosen audience wrote in different languages on the paper. This went on and on till the moment I decided the right time to stop when the last person wrote the last amusing message "stop this war" on the rice paper.

So it was the exciting moment, finally, I invited a person to cut the Japanese woman's waist-long braided locks of hair. The audience gasped; some screamed 'no'. A guy intervened, offering to cut his medium-long hair to rescue the Japanese girl.

Again, I invited one of the festival organizers to cut the Japanese girl's long braided lock of hair. Some audience was shocked. Then, my friend (who knew the plan) snipped off the other lock of hair. Eventually, the audience realized it was a purpose. The locks of hair were donated to the "Locks of Love" organization.

In the end, I stamped a red seal on the paper with my name in Japanese.

This performance was dedicated to my Japanese friend Asami who donated her locks of hair to the "Locks of Love" organization for children with cancer. It promotes awareness of cancer and children.