Professor Devan Shimoyama‘s Project “Mighty, Mighty” — an immersive art installation and fully-functional free barbershop — was featured in an article and video for The Washington Post. “Mighty, Mighty” is the centerpiece of “The Barbershop Project,” an initiative from CulturalDC that asks artists to reinterpret what barbershops can and should look like.
Hannah Natanson writes, “Shimoyama said the decor is meant to welcome those who identify as LGBTQ. That’s also the reason he asked that any barbers for Mighty Mighty identify as LGBTQ or be allies, Shimoyama said.
“The mission to create a barbershop open to ‘all different types of people’ — staffed by employees who can model and explain what it means to be LGBTQ — stems from the artist’s memories of black barbershops in Philadelphia, where he grew up. He now maintains a studio in Pittsburgh. Often, the shops were sites of ‘heterosexual fraternal bonding’ that excluded other identities, he said.”