Andros Zins-Browne
Andros Zins-Browne was trained as a dancer and choreographer, but his work gravitates towards the visual arts. He makes dance performances and hybrid environments at the intersection between installation, performance and conceptual dance, performed by a mix of professional dancers and amateurs. They explore the way in which the human body, movement and matter can interact until a certain melting point is reached and the diverse media appear to take on each other’s properties. Zins-Browne bases his work on topical issues. For instance, he has drawn much inspiration from digital culture and its impact on the human body and behaviour, producing science fiction-like performances in which characters move like avatars and real and virtual worlds overlap. In Second Life (2008) he studies people’s behaviour in protected environments such as gated and online communities, and in Neverland (2008) the body becomes a hologram.
In more recent work Zins-Browne focuses on the ambiguous relationship between mankind and his environment. In The Host (2010) three cowboys hopelessly try to curb an unstable, inflatable landscape, while the performance installation Welcome to the Jungle (2012) immerses the audience in a sensory ecosystem, a house of mirrors where subtle shifts in light, sound and smell question our own experience. Simultaneously with the tour of these works, Zins-Browne developed two new dance pieces. In &&&& (2012) he investigates with three dancers and six pianos how mutual interaction influences our behavioural patterns. With The Lac of Signs (2013), a solo for Chrysa Parkinson, Zins-Browne stages an exploration into movement, meaning and information overload, inspired by the dance classic The Swan Lake / Le Lac des Cygnes.
Andros Zins-Browne was born in New York in 1981. He began practicing ballet at an early age at the renowned Joffrey Ballet School. In 2002, after completing a degree in art semiotics at Brown University, he moved to Brussels in order to study at P.A.R.T.S (2002-2006), where he graduated with no less than five creations. He later pursued a research program in fine arts at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2010-2011). As a dancer, he has performed with choreographer Mette Ingvartsen (2009), Jonathan Burrows (2009) and in the work of artist Tino Sehgal for dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel (2012), among others. Zins-Browne’s own creations, in which he often collaborates with visual artists, have been presented in theatres, museums and on festivals across Europe. At the Impulse festival, Düsseldorf (DE, 2011), Zins-Browne received the Goethe Institute Award for The Host (2010), and the performance installation Welcome to the Jungle (2012) was part of the opening exhibition of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (2012).
Between 2006-2015, Zins-Browne has been an associated artist with wpZimmer in Antwerp.