American Women's Club of Hamburg Currents Magazine January 2014 | Page 34

AR TS & ENTER TAINMENT
Henning Christoph, Andrea Diefenbach, Brigitte
Museum für Kunst + Gewerbe
Kraemer, Ingar Krauss, Wolfgang Müller, Oliver Kleine Welten
Tjaden, Ralf Tooten and H. R. Uthoff – present
Micro Sculptures by Willard Wigan
different forms of migratory labor.
Through March 16, 2014

Xu Fang,Trash Recycler, © Wolfgang Mueller, 2012

Hamburg Museum

„Geht doch!“
Inklusion erfahren. Eine Erlebnis-Ausstellung
Through April 21, 2014
No matter if old or young, man or woman, with
or without disability – Inclusion (disability rights)
means to be with the crowd. Although disability
rights have historically existed as a relatively
cohesive movement, the movement centered
around inclusion has only recently begun to take
shape and to position itself in the eye of the general
public.
On the basis of poetic staging, interactions and
media installations the visitor dives into social
environments of people with and without handicap
and experiences playfully their everyday life. For
example: “inclusion” tabletop soccer in a bar or
shopping from a wheel chair driver’s point of view.
The visitor gets right in the middle of the life of
different people, gets to know them, proceeds
interactively in her situation and becomes sensitive
for different living conditions. There is also room
for humor: With the push of a button a man in
a wheel chair appears on a screen and says: “My
handicap is that I cannot yodel.” At the end you
will ask yourself, where does a handicap actually
begin? With a psychological or physical handicap?
As a wearer of glasses? As a leftie? What is my
handicap?

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The sculptures by British artist Willard Wigan are
so minute that one could easily inhale them. The
skyscrapers, trees and fairy tale scenes are less than
0,005 millimeters. “It began when I was five years
old,” says Willard. “I started making houses for ants
because I thought they needed somewhere to live.
Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy
world I escaped to. That’s how my career as a microsculptor began.” Each piece commonly sits within
the eye of a needle, or on a pinhead. The personal
sacrifices involved in creating such wondrous,
yet scarcely believable pieces are inconceivable to
most. Willard enters a meditative state in which his
heartbeat is slowed, allowing him to reduce hand
tremors and sculpt between pulse beats.
Willard Wigan’s sculptures are all but invisible to
the naked eye and come with their own microscope.
Prince Charles, Mike Tyson and the Marquis of
Bath own microscopic sculptures made by Mr.
Wigan, which can cost more than $40,000 a piece.
A set of 72 such works was acquired by former
British tennis player David Lloyd and was insured
for £11 million, or about $17 million, in 2007.

Willard Wigan, Skyline, © Willard Wigan

American Women’s Club of Hamburg e.V.