Tyra Wigg
*1989, Basel, Switzerland
My practice centres desires and problems of the human body in relation to its cultural, political, and material surroundings. Informed by my background as a contemporary dancer, I develop choreographic scores that move the body as it feels, or as it wants to feel – often in conflict with common ideas of beauty and productivity. I enjoy sampling and remixing movements, aesthetics, ideas, and methods from disciplines outside the contemporary arts field, for example gestures and relations from massage therapy, or emblematic dance moves, sounds, and outfits from the 1980s. Through a playful de- and reconstruction of familiar elements, I aim to loosen perception from judgement and desire from capitalism.
Whether in black boxes, art spaces, off-spaces, or over the phone line, I make performances with a desire to perforate the isolation that late capitalism imposes on individuals and groups. Without downplaying stark differences in objective and subjective life situations, I am especially interested in approaching emotional phenomena that span across divisions. Until now, this interest has channelled through working with the need for interpersonal touch, culturally inflicted attention disorder, and futurofobia (fear of the future).
My current focus moves in the universal and timeless phenomena of (sleep) dreams and their aesthetic qualities. Through storytelling, image and performance, I speculate on the idea of each dream as an artwork, and that, in the dreaming moment, every individual is an artist. By making dream life more present in waking consciousness, a collective identification as sensible creative beings – artists – is encouraged to emerge. Dreams are more, or other, than metaphors for waking life; they are evidence of an inherent ungovernability and creative force in all of us.