justification for grooming

The quest for beauty might be the world's most unintentionally followed religion. In the process of building a formal religion for beauty, elements of prayer, reverence and devotion were recognizable in every day grooming and in the beauty industry.

Justification for Grooming was installed into a hair salon and was displayed for one night. At 7:29pm visitors were invited to take a cut of hair in a sacramental ceremony.

Visual Art/Performance Pick

Johnny Ray Huston, SF Bay Guardian, July 25, 2007

Does beauty lie in the eye of the beholder or, as Kim Gordon once droned, does beauty lie? Erin Gallup's "Justification for Grooming" might not set out to definitively answer those questions, but — in using an actual hair salon as a setting to examine the habits humans fall into while attempting to look good — it's likely to brush up against them. Gallup will present a one-time-only six-hour music score that she put together with Scott Weiser that makes use of samples from beauty product commercials on radio and television. At 7:29 p.m., she'll allow members of the audience to "take a cut" of her hair, a ritual that suggests a more directly physical update of Yoko Ono's Cut Piece.