Me and Maya, 2013

Me and Maya, an installation of drawings and photographs, was motivated by Wiggins’s interest in the work of choreographer, filmmaker and film theorist Maya Deren (1917 – 1961). Wiggins studied the 1947 surrealist film, Meshes of the Afternoon, directed by Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid with Deren as the main actor. Deren and Hamid made this film in their home in Los Angeles.

Wiggins selected various scenes from the film and inserted herself into them, mimicking Deren’s gestures in similar spaces in her own home. She documented these performances in black-and-white photographs taken by Robert Kittila. Wiggins then created a series of optical geometric drawings that allude to the archetypal spaces and forms in the film and in Wiggins’s mimicked photographs. Together, the drawings and photographs chronicle Wiggins's reflexive practice of perceiving, occupying and (re)presenting spatiality while inviting multiple interpretations. The installation included the drawings and photographs together, like a large surrealist storyboard. Meshes of the Afternoon played nearby.

(photography by Robert Kittila)