GAMES - GRAPPLES - GROWTH GRIT

​Growing Takes Time is a real-life video game disguised as a dance performance: you “pluck” PikMii dancers like game tokens and guide them through high-stakes childhood-anxiety games (slap hands, red light/green light, hot potato). Tensions build as PikMii grapple in real-time duets inspired by jiu-jitsu—only when conflict is resolved can a flower bloom. When your PikMii’s flower “blooms,” you win prizes, and every physical mission you complete shapes the choreography’s next move. By turning relational conflict into participatory dance, Growing Takes Time transforms audience action into collective movement and growth.
As a participant, it’s obvious that you need to stay on your toes and remain aware of not only the activities going on around you, but the potential for the spontaneous to just as rapidly appear. It eventually dawned on me that Growing Takes Time is our contemporary Happening / Fluxus event meets the childhood-inspired competitive games of the South Korean tv series Squid Game (but, thankfully, non-lethal and inherently fun)."

-from Liam Orto of White Hot Magazine
In 2025, Growing Takes Time was presented by Karley Wasaff in collaboration with sponsors across iconic NYC venues, including Satellite Art Show, the headquarters of POSH.VIP, and Dixon Place.
Coming soon in 2026, the project is fully funded by the New York State Council for the Arts and will return in Spring 2026 with an expanded cast of nine PikMii performers—blooming alongside the wildflowers at Kingsland Wildflowers Rooftop.
Was Growing Takes Time a totally bananas experience? Absolutely, which is what makes it such an incredible, one-of-a-kind, hyperreal, fever dream of an experience - and I would gladly do it all over again at a moment’s notice. Honestly, I am so grateful to that usher from the May performance for not letting me in because this is the type of performance art that you need to enter into from the start or else you’ll completely lose the plot (or not even know what it is from the outset). Even with this in-depth review that I composed, it really is impossible for me to spoil the event because, unlike a film or a book where the engagement is more passive, this requires active participation in order to fully appreciate the awesomeness of Wasaff’s surrealistically humorous, communally-centric performance art. And much like the teachings of Kaprow or Joseph Beuys, Growing Takes Time proves how anyone can become an artist, performer, or agent of change!

​-from Liam Orto of White Hot Magazine

Press Releases & Critiques

"Growing Takes Time" by Karley Wasaff - A Performative Playtime Extravaganza in SoHo
by Liam Orto, Director of White Hot Magazine

“The story of my encounter with movement artist & educator Karley Wasaff began on a scorchingly humid evening in late-May… I happened upon a performance art event taking place inside Satellite Gallery…
…Wasaff wisely did not give away what exactly the performance was about, as an element of surprise was a prerequisite…
…The pre-performance written instructions definitely called to mind the 11 Rules for Happenings… Though there were a certain degree of rules in place, chance-based elements ultimately held sway for how the rest of the evening unfolded.”
Growing Takes Time: An Immersive Arcade Night in SoHo
by Digital Arts Blog
​"Set in an arcade-like world, this immersive experience puts you at the center of the action — whether you choose to watch or play."

Growing Takes Time Brings Playful World-building to POSH HQ
by Josh Sauceda, Director of ARCHIV3

Growing Takes Time proved that immersive art can be more than spectacle — it can be participatory, collaborative, and endlessly re-playable. Guests didn’t just witness a story unfold; they became co-authors of its growth. As the night closed, one thing was clear: this world will be waiting to welcome its players back, prizes in hand, ready to bloom even bigger next time.
Growing Takes Time Debuts in SoHo with Jiu Jitsu-Inspired Movement
by Josh Sauceda, Director of ARCHIV3
"The piece explored themes of growth and hardship, unraveling through an hour-long rotational performance that combined grappling movements inspired by jiu jitsu with surreal, plantlike costuming influenced by Pikmin."

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