Kaia Selene

I'm primarily an experimental artist. Although I'm a studied Butoh dancer, in all other areas I'm almost entirely self taught. More than anything this defines me as an artist and is both my greatest strength and biggest limitation. I think it makes my work unique in some ways and it also means I tend to do everything the "wrong" way and that I have to fight hard for every advance I make.

 

I've always made art and I've always been driven toward the path of "finding my own way." I both cherish and struggle with my tendency toward this as well as my compulsion to explore various mediums rather than hone in on something at which I might excel. For better or worse, for me, the process of reaching inward to try to tap some deeper essence requires these elements. Less interested in specifics and planning I aim to reach vulnerable spaces and successfully share them. I try to share deep feeling and I hope to inspire any kind of connection.

 

I believe that the true purpose of human life is to experience connection. I think that the struggle to feel truly connected to life and one another is the core wound of the western world and that we all share it. It seems impossible to me to suffer the way we suffer in our culture when we feel that we belong.

 

When I feel outside the world and apart from others (themes of my life) I find that over and over art brings me back into the world and helps me feel at one; with others, with everything. It's my only hope to create something once in a while that stirs something in someone else, maybe in you. If so we get to communicate and connect non-verbally in a core space, perhaps momentarily occupying some strange internal landscape together where we both know that we are made of the stars and that we two and the moon and sun and sea are all one; all carved of the same big spirit.

 

I hope to see you there,

Kaia Ivry

 

 

 

Kaia Ivry (formerly Kaia Selene) is a  multi-disciplinary artist who relocated to rural western Wisconson in 2016. Past works include assemblage, sculpture, writing, music, mask making, installations, butoh and experimental dance/ movement performance.  She's a studied Butoh performer and has worked with a variety of dancers including Daipan Butoh, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Diego Pinion  and Katsura Kan.