Anna Wolfe-Pauly

Artist Statement
I remember when I was younger, lining up for penny dives at the edge of the pool. Holding our breaths
for as long as we could we would grab for the pennies, sometimes still suspended in water. I would grab
for them, gathering handfuls of water. I had no capacity to hold the water, it would empty back out each
time; penny in palm. These pieces of water came and went every dive; we climbed out, short of breath,
the pool remaining the same height it was before we got there and after we left.
I could hold pennies but I could not hold water. I found the water only upon the moment of holding and
upon letting go. It wasn't as though each handful turned a color and became recognizable as individual
pieces. Each one disappeared and returned to its see-through, fuid state. I started to line up for the
wonder of holding that which could not be held. Every time I tried the water disappeared. I wanted to
hold the water like I could hold the penny, but it was impossible.
My work is concerned with engaging others in the practice of holding and making space for that which
does not immediately appear. Through participatory projects I create experiences that lead with details:
of weather, of light, of a bedroom; of that which appears almost accidental and offers an opportunity for
slowed attention.
My work straddles the practice of making and of thinking. I create playful situations in which people
attempt to hold that the ephemeral. I use text, performance, and installation to destabilize conceptions of
knowing and to interrogate impossibility. I develop actions that serve as marks of duration.
Although the mediums vary, the work always carries and demands an intimacy which makes naturally
lit, quiet spaces more alive. I give people permission to engage in intimate conversation with themselves.
In this way, my work acts as a platform for self-engagement and curiosity.
The participatory nature of my work serves as a gesture towards being with. With sea salt or a river bed I
invite people to actively participate in their own acts of landscape and of place. Whether the project asks
for the movement of the body or for long looks, it is an invitation to engage in becoming. I treat material
this way. I create opportunities to share presence of a given material in order to embody becoming as a
state of being. I view these situations as embodied thinking practices. They draw attention to the
participant's presence within silence, their experience the object of the work.
I collaborate with practitioners of different material backgrounds. We explore questions alongside one
another, making the encounter a process of dialogue. We make space for the unseen to appear. The
material outcome of these efforts are often a presentation of this questioning, an offering to engage in a
destabilized object or state of being. I am committed to diffusing the traditional materials of art practice
in order to ascertain that the artist is the contemporary priest.