Ensemble

Further on in the exhibition is The Wig Museum, which emerged from a dream Shaw had in 1999: strolling through the streets of Tijuana in search of a hotdog, he came upon the entrance to a wig museum, where a man accosted him and introduced himself as the institution’s curator. It was not until much later, in 2017, that he turned his dream into reality and created The Wig Museum, a theatrical landscape that viewers can walk through, described by the artist as a gateway to a “shopping mall in hell”. The installation sees Shaw bring his fascination with hair — whether artificial (wigs) or natural — to a climax. Hair as a sculptural mass, inclined to express the wildest ambitions of the powerful of this world — take, for example, the hairdo of an 18th century French aristocrat or the somewhat extravagant hairstyles characterisitc of most contemporary populist leaders.