Kaia Selene

I'm an experimental multi-disciplinary artist and almost entirely self taught. More than anything else, this spirit of exploration and inner adventure defines my creative life and is both my greatest strength and biggest limitation. I believe it brings a certain freedom and authenticity to my creations, yet means I often fail. Rather than truly refining any practice, I'm always doing something new, or combining new elements, so I fight hard for every success.

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I've always made art and I've always been driven down a path of finding my own way by internal compass. For better or worse the process of reaching inward to try to tap some deeper essence requires this. Less interested in specifics and plans I aim to reach internal and vulnerable spaces and successfully communicate them. I strive to share intense feeling and experiences and I hope to inspire any kind of connection. This process often entails just getting out of my own way and is not exactly comfortable.

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I do it because I believe in connection. More specifically I believe in active efforts at rebuilding the sense of relational interconnectedness that is our natural human right and has been stolen from us. True joy and purpose of human life come from this bond. And the shared struggle to feel truly connected to life, earth and one another is the core wound of a colonial, capitalist existence. It's not possible to suffer the way we do here when one knows they belong.

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When I feel outside the world and apart from everything and one (themes of my life) I find that over and over art brings me in and helps me feel at one; with my somatic experience of living, with others, with everything. It's my only hope to create something once in a while that also stirs something in someone else. Maybe even you. If so we get to communicate and connect non-verbally in a core space, apart from the mundane. Perhaps momentarily occupying some strange internal landscape where we both know that we are made of stars and that we two and the moon and sun and sea are all carved of the same spiritual cloth. We are one giant living endeavor hurtling through space towards who knows where. None of us are alone.

May you find a place where this veil is thin,

Kaia Selene

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Kaia Selene (formerly Kaia Ivry) is a multi-disciplinary self taught performer, dancer, costume creator and textile artist based in Olympia, WA. Past works also include painting, assemblage, writing, music, mask making, decorative arts, installations and performance art. She's also a studied Butoh dancer who has moved with many others including Daipan Butoh, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Diego Pinion, Death Posture and Katsura Kan.

"world's longest fringe?" Photo: Liz K. Ivry