During the height of the 1960s computer culture and technological hype, Ulla Wiggen became known for her paintings depicting circuit boards and electronic components. She was one of the pioneering artists exploring computers and technological culture in her art. She used parts of devices and cut-outs from computer magazines as her source materials, arranging them into her own compositions. The revolution of digital technology also impacted the development of music. In Sweden, the Fylkingen association, spearheaded by composer and musician Knut Wiggen, stood for the electronic music trend. Through Fylkingen and her future husband Knut, Ulla Wiggen was introduced to new topics and the art world at large.

In the late 1960s, Ulla Wiggen shifted from depicting the insides of electronic devices to their exteriors. The sky took over as the background of her works, and soon her subjects changed to people. A painting of a sphinx, based on a small photograph, served as a catalyst for creating portraits. In her first portrait, Wiggen became her own subject, with her gaze directed downward. She painted portraits of her close ones and on commission for thirty years using watercolours and acrylics. Inspired by artist Öyvind Fahlström, Wiggen learned to use a camera and image projection as aids in her early painting career. Fahlström taught that anything that facilitates one’s work is allowed.

Wiggen’s interest in depicting the human body and its insides in her paintings intensified in the 1970s. However, this theme remained unrealised as Wiggen began another career as a psychotherapist, which she continued until the 2020s. Alongside her therapy work, she painted now and then. In the 2010s, she again started painting regularly, and the idea of depicting internal organs resurfaced. Wiggen explored the subject by examining animal carcasses and medical literature. The paintings are not realistic depictions, however. The organs are detached from their actual locations or imaginatively combined, much like the electronic components in her early works.

In the 2010s, Ulla Wiggen’s expression gradually took on a more simplified turn. Images of internal organs detached from their backgrounds and eventually even from their square canvases. Since 2016, Wiggen’s subject matter has been the brain and eyes, with a focus in recent years only on pupils and irises. The technically demanding Iris works are numbered, and the latest paintings also bear the name of the iris’s owner. Throughout her career, Wiggen has explored people and machines from either the inside or the outside. In the Iris works, she examines the transition between external and internal worlds.