Regard Croisé Makwacha

Regard Croisé Makwacha is the second phase of the Kakibakuri project, developed by photographer Ruth Mpombo. It explores women’s hairstyles as a space for memory, identity, transmission, and transformation within the Lamba community. The research is taking place in Makwacha through an artist residency centered on immersion, listening, data collection, and collaboration with women in the community, with a particular focus on hairstyles that mark different life stages—adolescence, marriage, pregnancy, motherhood, and widowhood.

These hairstyles form a language that conveys information, social status, experiences, and knowledge across generations. However, they’re losing their meaning amid social transformations, beauty trends, Western influence, and the growing use of hair weaves and extensions, which are altering the cultural interpretation of hairstyles and now viewing them primarily as aesthetic. The project investigates this transformation without pitting tradition against modernity by examining what has changed, what has been lost, what remains, and what can still be passed on.

Through Regard Croisé Makwacha, hairstyling becomes much more than an aesthetic element: it becomes a gateway to women’s history, the transformations of the Lamba community, and collective memory.