A Moment Outside the Barbershop

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When Cheuk stepped out of a local barbershop in Cuba, she noticed a pair of twins playing outside. Their clothes were worn and torn, but it did not seem to matter to them. They laughed while tugging at each other’s sleeves, completely immersed in the moment between them. Watching them, Cheuk found herself smiling too.

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What stayed with her was how complete the moment felt — as though nothing about it needed to be more than what it already was.

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That feeling permeates Rich in What Matters — a photographic collection centred around local Cuban barbershops. At first glance, these spaces may appear defined by limitation: worn interiors, modest surroundings, limited resources. Yet the images carry a presence that makes those assumptions harder to hold onto.

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More Than a Place for Haircuts

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People sit, wait, talk, laugh. Time passes slowly. A haircut becomes more than a service; it becomes a space where conversation, familiarity, and trust unfold naturally between people.

What begins to emerge is not a story about poverty, but a reflection on the kinds of human spaces that are quietly disappearing.

The barbershops in Rich in What Matters feel striking not because they are extraordinary, but because they still allow this kind of presence to happen naturally. People linger. Conversations drift. Attention remains with the moment instead of elsewhere.

 

The emotional atmosphere within these spaces cannot be measured through wealth, productivity, or progress, yet it is immediately felt.

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When Every Space Becomes Functional

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In many cities today, everyday life is increasingly shaped by efficiency, movement, and constant optimisation. Waiting has become scrolling. Silence is filled immediately. Cafés become workspaces. Public spaces become transactional. Even moments of rest are expected to be productive in some way.

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Modern life continues to accelerate, but within that acceleration, something quieter has also been fading — the ability to simply exist alongside one another without purpose or performance.

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We are surrounded by people more than ever, yet everyday interaction feels increasingly rare.

 

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Spaces That Still Feel Human

 

This is perhaps why the smiles within Cheuk’s photographs feel so affecting. They do not appear staged, symbolic, or compensatory. They are not presented as a contrast to hardship, nor as evidence of resilience. They simply exist, as though the moment asks nothing from them beyond being present within it.

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The exhibition focuses less on defining hardship and more on the moments that continue to feel deeply alive. Instead, it quietly asks a more uncomfortable question: what kinds of spaces still allow people to feel emotionally present with one another?

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Because perhaps what feels increasingly rare today is not happiness itself, but the environments that once allowed it to emerge so naturally.

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What Are We Losing?

 

Modern life has not only changed the pace at which we live. It has also changed the way people inhabit space together.

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Moments of waiting become moments of distraction. Shared spaces become temporary and functional. Conversations shorten. Attention fragments. The act of lingering — of spending time without urgency — slowly disappears.

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Rich in What Matters captures environments where that disappearance has not fully taken place. Within these barbershops, people still sit together without needing a reason beyond the moment itself.

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Rethinking What It Means to Be Rich

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In this sense, Rich in What Matters is not asking viewers to rethink money alone. It asks us to reconsider the conditions through which life is experienced — how time is shared, how connection is formed, and how people continue to exist together within a world that is becoming faster, more individualised, and increasingly detached from the act of lingering.

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The exhibition ultimately shifts the meaning of what it means to be ‘rich’. Not through accumulation, but through presence. Not through what is owned, but through what is still felt, shared, and lived.