Lumi Tuomi

 Hairwork

In Tuomi’s works, hair is a storyteller and takes its place as a subject and a medium. When hair is separated from our bodies, meanings associated with it change.

The artists mother’s red hair twirls as earrings in their self-portraits, but also embroiders as a red yarn on textile, in works investigating Karelian culture.

Tuomi’s practice investigates connections to our environments, memory, and each other, that are kept within our hair. Through hair, they aim to reconnect with Karelian culture, through traditional crafts such as hand spinning hair into yarn and using traditional Karelian embroidery.

Using human hair weaves Tuomi's work together with the present and past. Due to the personal and timeless quality of hair, their works become a physical archive of people, relationships and cultural heritage.

Can Grief Be Transformed Into Something Else (2024) examines grief and growth, through deconstruction and reconstruction of the artists first wig that they used throughout high school.

The shame of losing their hair in early teens, right before the beginning of high school, pushed Tuomi towards the use wigs in order to hide their autoimmunity condition called alopecia.

In this hair-textile work Tuomi turns towards the conflicting object that brought protection yet caused discomfort throughout their youth; like a band-aid over a wound.

In the work, human hair from the artists wig is spun into yarn with a drop spindle and embroidered into linen fabric. The role and form of the wig shifts, as it becomes a valuable source of material. Through the act of crafting, Tuomi investigates grief processes physically and mentally, and lets go of their past identity built through the wig.

In the work I Would Give You My Hair If I Could (2021) intricate strands of the artist's mother's hair form the comforting sentence, unveiling the intimate relationship between a mother and the artist who has alopecia.