Đinh Thảo Linh immersed herself in the daily life of the museum and the surrounding area, engaged with its essence as part of the artist residency at Conflictorium. Through a (fictional) mysterious box received anonymously before she arrived in India, Linh speculates on the life of Bachuben Nagarwala, Ahmedabad’s first certified hairdresser, by (re)creating a hair salon in Bachuben’s former workspace, the Gool Lodge. As she creates and adds artifacts to this archival box and blurs the lines between past and present, the question arises: Is the hairdresser Linh, Bachuben, or the unknown sender?
Assisted in Linh’s recreated salon. My role was to interact with local customers ,document Linh’s process , giving customers a brief about Linh’s practice and the residency project, translating Gujarati/Hindi to English for Linh and vice versa to the customers. At the end Linh held an interrogating session after all the haircuts to ask about their dreams. To dive to Linh’s recreated world of Bachuben was such an enriching experience to speculate how a simple salon place and overcome language barriers . Most of the customers were women who came there to relax from their everyday household duties, it held for them an escape to a place where they can be free of duties and just be. It was fascinating to see hoe a salon can transform into a community of freedom and aspirations.
