Tiger Play

For my father

Paul J Smith

May 10th, 1954 - October 15th, 2018

TIGER PLAY was originally conceived as an allegorical investigation into documented cases of individuals who chose to live with wild animals in domestic spaces, initially provoked by an ongoing interest in the intimacy of oppression and the psychology of precarity. The final aesthetic language was informed by my relationship with my father, his specific socioeconomic identity and the repetition and revision of generational trauma that is handed down from parent to child behind closed doors. This project explores the notion of dangerous play and the consequence of scaling up mutually constructed, fantastical identities. TIGER PLAY confronts both the ultimate smallness and greatness of all of our plans. It is a recreation of the labor of aspiration that exists between two people and the tragic realization that some spaces cannot be shared, some dangers cannot be domesticated. The resulting installation is a rehearsal space for love, loss and the addictive pathos of unattainable dreams. Everything between us will always be so big and so small.