To Create Her Bold and Elaborate Points, This Artist Uses One Tool—Her Hair. See Her Designs Here

Some sculptors need a ton of
marble or Corten steel to realize their work. Laetitia Ky, an
artist based in the Ivory Coast, just needs some wire, thread, and
her own hair. 

With those three simple tools, Ky makes elaborate sculptures,
then photographs the results and shares them on Instagram, where
she has amassed more than 228,000 followed. Among the designs she’s
created are those for a TV
set, a trumpet, and a pair of
flowers rising from a
vase.

The artist, who also works as a
fashion designer, didn’t have a strong relationship to hair growing
up, though she did learn to braid her mom’s and sister’s hair at
age five. It wasn’t until six years ago that she found a love for
braiding. “I wanted to go back to my African roots,” she
told Dazed
Digital earlier this
year.

Her hair sculptures came a few
years later. “At the beginning, it was only for fun and to show my
creativity, but with time it changed,” she said to Dazed. “I saw
the impact it can have on people so now it’s more serious, more
engaged. I do it to send messages of self-love, tolerance,
equality, and respect. I do it to try to ameliorate the world I
live in.”

Indeed, Ky’s creations have
grown increasingly sophisticated in both design and message. In
2017, she designed a work in which a male figure looks up the skirt of a woman as a comment
on the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and victim-shaming.
Earlier this summer, in protest of American anti-abortion laws, she
unveiled an image of uterus with each
fallopian tube flipping the bird. (Most of her followers
are American women.)

“Thousands of people can say the
same thing without it having the same impact. What makes the
difference is the way you say it,” she told Elle magazine.
“Art makes it possible to reach more people because it finds an
original, particular way to speak about the subject so that many
people will linger.”

See more of Ky’s designs
below.

The post To Create Her Bold and Elaborate Points, This
Artist Uses One Tool—Her Hair. See Her Designs Here appeared
first on artnet News.