Central Location
Central Location is an interactive project offering free hair cutting and shaving to the public. The project is context-responsive and as such reference different social and cultural aspects of hair cutting or shaving, in particular forced ones.
In Berlin Ashery opened a Hairdresser as an off-site project of NGBK gallery. Ashery offered hair shaving to the public as different characters; an orthodox Jew, a rabbit, as herself and as a black woman. Each character changes the context of the interaction. In Berlin the intentions were to reflect on the historical narratives related to the hair shaving in the concentration camps during WWII and also to reflect on the complexity of the notion of the contemporary Skinhead in Berlin.
In the window galley in Charing Cross Rd Central location was challenging the divide between the art school building and the street out side by inviting people from the street who would phone Ashery’s mobile to come into the building and have a hair cut whilst other people form the street can watch, those from the art college came out to watch too. The piece set in the window also reflected on the sex industry in Soho.
Central location was shown in: MA degree show, 2000, Window Gallery Central St Martin College of Art & Design Charing Cross Rd, part of Open Surgery; Toronto, 2001, Wonderyears exhibition at NGBK 2003 and Act Art 2 at the 291 Gallery, London.