Janice Mascarenhas, a São Paulo based artist, who grew up in a favela outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is gaining an international following with her work, in which she uses hair as her medium.

The 26 year old hair stylist, visual artist and creative director sculpts braids, spelling out words, and fashions dreadlocks into shapes and styles incorporating flowers, pearl beads, miniature figures and clay masks. As a result of her visually striking art, Mascarenhas was announced as the winner of the Converse x Dazed 100 fund (a global celebration of next generation names leading change in their communities and across their fields), and is set to create ‘an art film exploring the ancestry of Black hair through a Brazilian perspective, fusing futurism and tradition through the language of beauty’.