The hair on a person’s head is inextricably tied to their identity, how people perceive themselves and how others perceive them as well. Within this body of work I explored this relationship between hair and identity and how this is impacted when people loose their hair. This exploration was influenced by my recent diagnosis with alopecia, a condition where my immune system attacks my hair follicles causing them to fall out. As this was a traumatic and abrupt change I felt drawn to explore my loss and self consciousness through my work in order to process my emotions and explore how the loss of hair can impact other people. Identity and self confidence, especially for women, are connected to hair, as well as the grief of losing part of oneself when hair is lost. These concepts were developed into a series of drawings, prints and an installation. This was a personal project that endeavoured to create works that captured the balancing act of identity performance through self defence and self assertion and encourage people to consider their own hair and relationship towards it.