Ch-ch-hairs

The chairs in Cahoonas hair studio, Peckham, are a work by artist Laura Eldret. The fabric design is based on Eldret’s artwork Pro, a banner work made to celebrate the hairdressing trade. The banner form also suggests a protest, in this case against dismissive views of hairdressing as a lowly profession. Pro features loaded motifs that seek to reflect the importance and potency of hairdressing. These include contemporary ‘handle with care’ hands, and a head with a single tuft of hair: a hairstyle originally worn during the Vedic period in the 15th century BC that is said to ‘allow God to pull you to Heaven’. There are also ‘all-seeing eyes’, the form of which is a development of a design used in her previous work Gotas (2016).

Eldret’s Pro is inspired by the hairdressers in her family: her mother, aunts and cousins (including Tracey Cahoon of Cahoonas).