Strong Hair ጠንካራ ፀጉር is a collection of 100 looping portraits that merge the diversity and power of African hair with the blockchain.  

A diverse range of ethnic groups from all over Ethiopia were featured, representing the country’s cultural mosaic of over 80 different ethno-linguistic groups. In Ethiopia, you can often identify somebody’s nation or tribe just by looking at them and hair can be both a social signal and a status symbol. Many local African hairstyles are disappearing. When humanity loses a hairstyle, it loses a visual language that may never be repeated again. Thousands of years of culture has created these looks. 

Each hairstyle was captured using a homemade metal platform with a 360 degree spinning camera arm. The rig was made completely with accessible materials in order to inspire the local community that anything can be done by hand. The circling videos were then looped, so that playback can be continuous without a discernible beginning or end. 

The collection was “minted“ as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain, with the video files stored permanently across a distributed network of computers. This preserved the precious cultural vessels on a fully decentralized blockchain. Art collectors from around the world participated in the NFT auctions, including from the Ethiopian diaspora, collecting the *Strong Hair* pieces into their decentralized crypto wallets. Using a custom smart contract, 10% of the crypto earnings were automatically distributed into a separate wallet, the “Yatreda Ekub,” which is used to help other African artists pay the fees to mint their first artworks, and to collect meaningful works of art from others around the world.