Birgittas work is research based and develops out of experimental practice grounded in process-based, expanded drawing that seeks to capture fleeting moments of time and motion through a trace of bodily action and gesture. This may take the form of a performance, a graphic score, an animation, a three dimensional construction or a series of sequential images on paper, but always starts with drawing. Birgitta uses a range of mark-making techniques – from messy, visceral and material substances applied with the fingers to digital projections.

As for themes, she is interested in exploring social issues via embodied experience and how our sense of touch, gestures and actions lead us to perform our gender identity including issues around sexuality – Hot Pussy (1993), Holes (2021), performing ‘femme’ identity – Dog Betty (2007), confronting the voyeuristic male gaze – Out There in the Dark (2008), feminism and the spirit world – Medium (2012), visualising domestic labour – Erasure (2018) and reclaiming the night – dotdot dash (2018).

Birgittas practice also explores animism: the vital spark of movement that brings the still and lifeless into motion. Currently, she is very interested in natural forms of animation such as biological decomposition and the spread of illness through the human body and she is working on funded research in which hand drawing is used with Generative Adversarial Networks to visualize statistics on illnesses caused by domestic violence.

Short bio

Birgitta Hosea is an artist and curator working with expanded animation, experimental drawing and live performance to create durational images, embodied events, experiential installations and short films that expand the concept of the moving image out of the screen and into the present moment. Currently Professor of Moving Image and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, she was previously Head of Animation at the Royal College of Art and prior to that at Central Saint Martins, where she completed a practice-based PhD in animation as a form of performance.

Her most recent exhibitions include ASIFAKEIL, Vienna; National Gallery X; Venice & Karachi Biennales; Oaxaca & Chengdu Museums of Contemporary Art; Hanmi Gallery, Seoul; Centre for Recent Drawing, London; Guizhou Provincial & Hunan Museums, China. Her work is included in the Tate Britain and Centre d’Arte Contemporain, Paris, archives. She has received an Adobe Impact Award, a MAMA Award for Holographic Arts, an honorary fellowship of the Royal Society of the Arts and has been selected for artist residencies in Azerbaijan, Ireland, Italy and the UK. She has written a number of publications on experimental animation and drawing, her most recent book being Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945 (Bloomsbury, 2020) co-written with Maryclare Foá, Jane Grisewood and Carali McCall.