An Artist Duo’s Haven of Synthetic Hair
Merryn Omotayo Alaka and Sam Frésquez steamed, cut, and sewed together lengths of hair by hand to create an ecosystem of biomorphic sculptures.
Your Birth is My Birth, a collaboration between artists Merryn Omotayo Alaka and Sam Frésquez, feels at once vast and intimate. Entering the show at Jane Lombard Gallery is like stepping into a fantastical yet strangely comforting grove — what the artists call their “Kanekalon forest” after the synthetic hair brand, a continuation of their ongoing Hairland series begun in 2017.
Created from the textured fiber, enormous biomorphic sculptures cascade from the ceiling and emerge from the ground. Kanekalon hair, sold crimped, becomes smooth only with heat. To achieve the silky texture in these works, the artists steamed, cut, and sewed together lengths of hair by hand, clamping the strands to welded metal structures.
The material recalls the communal, multigenerational experience of caring for hair and the central role it plays in forming queer, gender, and racial identity, particularly in Black and Latine communities. Omotayo Alaka and Frésquez have drawn on this principle to craft a visual language of their own, in which Kanekalon hair serves as the regenerative source material for an imagined world populated by several speculative species, including the "Stacking Pearl" and "Hearing Bells" (both 2026).
At first glance, the sculptures appear to be made of a continuous, glossy material. The true scale of this installation is only revealed up close: Noticing the artists’ careful manipulation of individual fibers illuminates the countless acts of care, leaving us with a sense of wonder at the sheer expansiveness that Omotayo Alaka and Frésquez forge from the minute.
The exhibition’s central sculpture and species, “Listening Roots” (2026), appears to pull resources from the ground through nodes shaped like large lily pads. I imagine deep roots continuing below the surface, suggesting the many generations of care that sustain a single organism.
Just as synthetic hair extends the body beyond the biological, Omotayo Alaka and Frésquez reimagine the line between the synthetic and the organic, inviting us into a world that draws its familiarity from the human-made and its strangeness from the natural.
Your Birth is My Birth continues at Jane Lombard Gallery (58 White Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through June 13. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
