| ‘Pins’ originates from the Warner Brothers’ adaptation of the classic Grimm’s fairytale called Hansel and Gretel. What drove me to focus on this particular episode was Witch Hazel’s ardent quest to catch the orphaned children. I noticed that as she would exit each scene a trail of bobby pins followed en route as she went about her daily business.
I then drew parallels to my own experience with the hair accessory and realised how I have used them half of my life. I have found a lot of practical usages of the bobby pin for many things ranging from; hairstyling, cleaning dust between the buttons on my computer keyboard to collecting discarded objects in small crevices. Since being raised in a western lifestyle for most of my life there was no doubt any influence on the domestic front particularly with my need for bobby pins. The hair accessory has not only been a convenient ornament but also perhaps as a means to subconsciously subdue an aspect of my islander inheritance.
With these coincidences in mind I found the correlation with the term ‘bobbies’, a British slang prescribed for police officer, and the hair accessory Bobby Pin. These parallel implications suggest order, convention, infinity, society, vanity and control.
In the current context in which society is organized, I have observed that we as part of the organic process of life are in a constant flux of change and restoration. We live in a society where the demands of quick fixes, perfection, experimentation and one that promises inclusion motivates us to shift, shape and control an aspect of ourselves in forms of natural or superficial, conscious or subconscious, tangible or elusive.
It is through these experiences of a man-made medium that motivated me to reflect on the edifices of post-colonialism, how it has shaped our ideologies and the people that we have become. These experiences we create can be seen as the ephemeral trail of the aftermath of change and inadvertently the beginnings of restoration. |
