Chapman
tiger helix (oblivion)
— ongoing
Tiger Helix (Oblivion) is an expansive installation and playful performance that explores wild and queer ways to change and get free in the face of polycrisis*.
Its origins lie in a single image that surfaced during a therapy session in lockdown when asked to close my eyes and imagine what freedom means to me. A shimmering, pulsing double helix made of tiger-print spandex, with hands reaching out from inside its coils came to mind in the darkness. Pretty weird, pretty queer.
This tiger helix has since become an obsession and a structure for me to think about freedom as queer, cyclical, embodied, and always in process.
Through physical movement, installation and mark making this performance wraps in references to my relationship with nature, creation and destruction whilst living in a city, research into spiralism, non-linear time and the pseudo science morphic resonance theory. This is a collective experiment in what the tiger helix could tell us about how change is experienced around us by both humans and non-humans.
Morph suits are a central tool: worn in performance, they allow a blurring of boundaries between human and animal, slipping the grids of gender and species into something material, animorphic, cartoonish, and playful. Its therapeutic beginnings - reaching inside yourself to reach out to others and find queer forms of freedom amidst disaster, remains central to the process.
At its heart, Tiger Helix (Oblivion) is a practice of collective improvisation - creating temporary, playful ecosystems where images, gestures, sounds, and ideas ripple between bodies. Allowing space for self-consciousness and release, following curiosity and instinct, to discover what emerges without preconception. It is a queer ecological world-building - funny, affective, unstable, permeable, and always unfinished.
*Popularized by historian Adam Tooze, polycrisis describes a “modern, interconnected era where multiple, complex risks reinforce one another, creating profound uncertainty and making challenges difficult to manage in isolation”.
Presented as part of the London Conference of Critical Thought stream 'Art & Architecture: Planetary & Apocalyptic Spaces' 2023. Further developed at The Grange 2023, including wall paintings and a movement collaboration with Zanni CT. Another iteration of the work was performed with Sahjan Kooner at Eastside Projects 2023. Currently in further r&d with Zanni CT, Moa Johansson and Samra Mayanja, supported by Towner Eastbourne and Strange Field Glasgow 2026-2027.
Limited edition tees and prints are on sale, contact for prices and details.