Uta Tiggesmeier is a sculptor and printmaker from Germany, working in London (UK) and Arles (France).
She creates large scale drawings and sculptures using sensual materials including plaster, jesmonite, bones, clay, bronze, blown and cast glass and contrasts them with forged iron or found natural objects. She draws on canvas, strong monolithic beings, whose authority emerge line after line as from a distant memory. Coalescing ancestral symbolism and underlying sexuality they take the form of anthropomorphic totems with a primitive and mystical presence.
Uta’s imagination explores parallel worlds, touching on animist mythologies and fertility cults. Her works translate stories, emotions and tensions into organic shapes, often alluding to female forms or the interplay of female and male forces.
Her images evoke the myths through which human beings have tried to make sense of their existence in the physical and spiritual world. Acknowledging different world views they challenge patriarchy and the behaviour of entitlement in contemporary societies.
Imposing biomorphic drawings form an integral part of her work. Intimate and meditative, the act of drawing opens a space of interiority, a fragile realm of dormant ancient knowledge. Immediate and experimental, these drawings slowly bring into sculptural form the purity and wildness within every life form.
Uta has extended the boundaries of her practice in recent years by performative installations for public participation and by architectural models for the play design of public space.
