In 2018, Wiggins travelled to Brazil, where she studied the work of artist Mira Schendel (1919 – 1988) in São Paulo and worked as an artist in residence at the Kaaysá Artist Residency in the Atlantic rainforest.

Mira Schendel immigrated to Brazil from Europe in the late 1940’s. Schendel was a self-taught artist with deep interests in language, philosophy, and phenomenology. Her work manifested in drawings, paintings, prints and sculpture. Schendel was also a practitioner of the I Ching (an ancient Chinese cosmological text and system of divination).

While at the Kaaysá residency (in a stunning location where the rainforest meets the Atlantic Ocean), Wiggins connected her own, long-standing, I Ching practice with her experiences in these beautiful and fragile environments. She translated these phenomenological contemplations into simple ink drawings. These drawings/meditations in turn influenced her performative photographs.

Working with Brazilian photographer Fernando Lima, Wiggins (shrouded in a diaphanous red veil) invoked the goddess Oshun in the beautiful aqueous environment of the caichoira (waterfall). These performative works created in the waterfall are titled Cascata or Cascade. In the black and white photographs titled In Lourdina’s Garden, Wiggins appears underneath the giant flower called the Emperors Torch or the Bastao do Imperador. In the black and white Beach Chair, Wiggins lays horizontally in the chair naked on the beach and upon the horizon of the ocean. These images all evoke both the spiritual and the physical influence that the land/waterscape of the Mata Atlântica had on Wiggins in Brazil.
(photography by Fernando Lima)