Me and Maya 
a mixed media installation of ten 18” x 24” gouache and graphite drawings and
twelve 18” x 24” photographs

This installation of drawings and photographs titled Me and Maya was motivated by Wiggins’ interest in the work of choreographer, filmmaker, and film theorist Maya Deren. Wiggins studied the 1947 surrealist film Meshes of the Afternoon that was directed by Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid. Deren is the main actor in this black and white avant-garde film. The film was shot in Deren’s own home and Maya moves throughout the surroundings in slow meditative actions: in the garden, picking up a fake flower, opening doors, climbing stairs, opening windows, looking in mirrors, and laying in bed. Wiggins chose various mise-en-scenes from Deren and Hamid’s film and inserted herself in them; mimicking Deren’s gestures in similar spaces in her own home. She documented these performances in black and white photographs. Wiggins also created a series of optical geometric drawings that allude to the archetypal spaces and forms in the film and in Wiggins’ mimicked photographs. In tandem, the drawings and photographs chronicle Wiggins' reflexive practice of perceiving, occupying and (re)presenting spatiality while inviting multiple interpretations. This series of black and white photographs and geometric drawings were installed together like a large surrealist storyboard. Maya Deren’s film Meshes of the Afternoon played nearby. This project is the first segment of Wiggins’ larger ongoing project – “Searching Selves: An Intersubjective Practice with Remarkable Women Artist’s of the 20th Century.”
photography by Robert Kittila

Try to see Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid’s 1943 film Meshes of the Afternoon with the original soundtrack by Teijo Ito.

Installation images: