About BAD Hair Uprooted
BAD Hair Uprooted is a touring cultural and research platform that investigates the origins of the idea of “bad hair” in the context of slavery and colonial beauty standards, and how people and societies around the world relate to it today.
Through portraiture, exhibitions, film, and public dialogue, it explores the physical, mental, and financial toll of this construct.
Why it exists
For centuries, Afro-textured hair has been judged against a standard it was never meant to meet. That judgment did not disappear with the end of slavery or colonial rule. It continues in schools, workplaces, beauty standards, and in how people see their own hair. BAD Hair Uprooted traces this history to its roots and asks what it still costs today, not only for those who wear natural hair, but for the societies that shape how it is seen.
How it works
Each edition of BAD Hair Uprooted is developed in and with the place it visits. Large-format portraits form the core of the work. Around them, lectures, public dialogues, hair and fashion shows, and community care days invite people to look, listen, and respond. What is shared in these moments becomes part of the work itself, creating a growing record of how hair is experienced across countries and generations.
Where it has traveled
The platform began with its founding edition at the Billie Holiday Theatre in New York. It has since been presented in Suriname, Curaçao, the Netherlands, and Rwanda, where the Kigali edition took place on International Women’s Day 2026.
The book and the film
The research behind BAD Hair Uprooted is published in the book Slecht Haar Ontworteld, de Onvertelde Geschiedenis van Kroeshaar. The documentary BAD Hair Uprooted, the Untold History of Black Follicles is in production, following an eight-minute film of the same name released in 2024.
The founder
BAD Hair Uprooted was founded by Drs. Mireille Liong-A-Kong, a Dutch-Surinamese photographer, author, and cultural entrepreneur. Trained in informatics at the University of Amsterdam, she approaches hair through pattern recognition, looking for what repeats across history, countries, and personal experience.
In 2002 she founded kroeshaar.com, the first natural hair website in the Netherlands and Suriname, followed by Going-Natural.com in 2004. She has written three books on natural hair, including Kroeshaar, Wat je Moet Weten en Meer, the first Dutch book on African hair. In 2020 she testified before the New York City Commission on Human Rights in support of the CROWN Act, and in 2024 she received a Certificate of Recognition from the City of New York.
BAD Hair Uprooted is now being developed as the foundation for her doctoral research into the history of Black hair.
