It’s Never “Just Hair”

Meet the Chudail — the femme fatale they warned you about. Too, too much. Her hair flows wild over the boxes our society stands on — neat, polished confines of obedience. A Collective farewell to the decaying ideologies that taught us to discipline ourselves with combs and braid away our natural ferocity. She’s cutting through them all. Bye-Bye.

A love letter to rage and reclamation, to women who’s hair refuses to behave. This Chudail isn’t hiding. She’s spinning and laughing over the ruins of what doesn’t serve anymore. Her Mumma’s question — “What did you do to your hair?” — passed down like an heirloom, lives in every strand she refuses to tame. Colonial hangovers? Snipped. Patriarchal combs? Snapped. Monstrous or divine? You decide — but whatever you do, vote for her before she haunts your dreams.

About the Artist
Avantika Tibrewala is an Indian-born performance artist and maker. Based in Amsterdam, Tibrewala moves between live performance—encompassing dance theatre—and documentary interviews, placing the body at the center as both a subject and a site of meaning-making. Driven by an exploration of human behaviour, her works engage with themes of social normativity and the politics of the unspoken. She is interested in presenting the investigation of her curiosities to the public rather than asserting fixed narratives. An interplay between intimate, provocative and thought-provoking, her work reimagines the relationship between the audience and the stage. Her artistic stimulus is rooted in her country’s ever-changing landscape, colours, rituals and the Indian cinema providing the spectator with multiple elements and constant shifts during the performance – an aesthetic strategy responding critically to the accelerated attention economy of contemporary spectatorship.

This work is the winner of the Public Vote for the MOMO X Amarte Open Call 2026. Read more.