Legendary international performance artist, Sha Sha Higby, whirls within a densely, lacelike thicket of silver filligree in her latest work "In Folds of Gold", premier of exotic sculptural costume & puppetry dance, in a profound drama of memory and timelessness. Internationally renowned for her evocative and haunting performances, Higby is influenced by her studies in Asia, Noh Theater, Butoh, shadow puppets.
Sha Sha Higby approaches dance through the medium of sculpture. She is an “icon” in her generation in establishing the sculptural object as a body costume that can be integrated with theater and dance to create its own poetic plot in solo performance.
The work explores a whimsical journey of life, death, and rebirth through mesmerizing delicate ephemeral images that evoke the passage of time and day, or the shifting of the seasons. Using the painterly manipulation of hand crafted materials and textures interwo ven with a labyrinth of intricate props and puppets, Higby's work creates a journey in which movement and stillness meet. Shreds of memory lace into a drama of a thousand intricate pieces, slowly moving, and stirring our memory toward a sense of patience and timelessness.
Higby received a BS in art from Skidmore College and, 5 years in Indonesia under a Fulbright Scholarship 5 years of documented research for her MFA, she also studied for 1 year in Japan, and 6 months in India under an Indo-American Fellowship. She has received numerous awards and grants, including multiple grants from the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Marin Arts Council, Inter-Arts, New Langdon Arts and LACE (Interdisciplinary N.E.A.), California Arts Council Touring Subsidy, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Inc. (Brooklyn, NY), both Fulbright and Indo-American fellowships to India, the U.S. Travel Fund for Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts in Solo Theater Fellowship, the N.E.A. RIARP program, U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions, the Flow Fund, California Arts Council Artists Fellowship Program., the Japan -United States Friendship Commission , and The Japan Foundation for collaborative work with Japan-U.S. artists .
She has performed internationally Festival Internazional delle Marionnnette, Divaldo Korzo: Bratislava, Slovakia, Festival of Sydney: Sydney, Australia; Singapore Festival of the Arts, Hong Kong Fringe Festival, Tokyo National College Of Art, Tokyo Textile Institute, Tokyo, International Puppet Theater Festival, Stara Zagora
Bulgaria;, exhibited at the Portland Art Museum, Bellevue Art Museum, Arizona State University, Portland State University, California State Summer School For The Arts, Center For The Arts At Yerba Buena Gardens, Honolulu Academy of Arts, HI, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Columbia College,Inter-Arts Program, San Francisco Asian Art Museum,, The Glass Museum,Tacoma,Washington, Virginia Arts Festival,, COCA,St Louis. Colby College; Maine; Evergreen State College, CSUB San Bernardino Dept of Music, Olympia Washington Michigan Technological University, San Jose Museum of Art Japanese-American Museum, Baltimore College of Art, Mc Callum Theater, Palm Desert San Diego Museum of Art Duke Institute of the Arts Allegheny College, Meadville, PA Scottsdale Center for the Arts, and so on.
