Adèle Essle Zeiss
Studio grant holder in Stockholm 3 April – 27 September 2020
Adèle Essle Zeiss. Born 1983 in Stockholm. Lives and works in Stockholm.
Graduated from the Royal Swedish Ballet School, modern dance (2002) and the Royal Institute of Art, five-year programme in fine arts, Stockholm (2018).
I create performance works and installations based on fundamental aspects of the body, filling the space with an enhanced physical presence. I often use objects to clarify what happens inside the bodies. My artistic practice originates in dance and choreography, and I develop new ideas through physical experimentation, often together with dancers.
Photo: Adèle Essle Zeiss
In my two most recent works, I have explored weight and equilibrium in installations where dancers balance on suspended planks with sacks of concrete as counterweights to their bodies or limbs. In this way, I have studied balance, a fully automatic system that is learned and stored in the body and cannot be controlled by willpower. I was also interested in the experience of body weight from the internal perspective of one’s own body, and in contrast to what the act of weighing a body represents.
At Iaspis I will try out new ideas and develop a new, major performance work in which dancers share each other’s weight by using ropes and pulleys.