Georgia Sagri
Basel Social Club

“The piece Dynamis: Soma in orgasm exhibited in Documenta 14 in Athens and in Kassel (2017) acts as a reminder that the social exists. The orgasm is the work’s structural methodology. Sexual encounter for all living creatures demands four stages: excitement, plateau, peak (orgasm), and resolution. The sculptures involved in the work evoke organs, and when they go out in the public, on the streets, that’s the moment of the orgasm, and that’s why the sculptures are called Soma in orgasm; as leg, as hand, as brain, as ear, as heart, as breast, as sex. The excitement in the piece is the emotional shaping, and the shape of the training, the breathing patterns, and the shape of the sculptures, the shape of the work. The plateau is the moment when this shape makes a trajectory with other trainings, with different forms and others, and of course when this takes place the orgasm happens and the organs go out. The resolution is when in the end we all gather to talk and to recall. Dynamis was the central character: Dynamis is orgasmic force, not exactly strength, and not exactly power. The force that makes people transform, change their lives – personally but also socially. So, it’s not the orgasm of sexual intercourse, it’s the orgasmic force, which makes people come together and change the course of their lives. The orgasmic force is the space and time we can give to each other to understand our differences, where we actually understand what needs to be transformed. It’s also the political or social moments that we understand as revolutions.” –Georgia Sagri

Georgia Sagri’s sculptures often exist as doubles. Sagri describes these double works as “modules”, as the module – a set of standardized parts or independent units that can be used to construct a more complex structure – conveys the potential for an object to take on multiple meaning in space. Their double existence (two identical object-as-sculpture-as-modules used in the same exhibition) allows the potential for the same objects to live in different sites (e.g., inside/ outside). Dynamis: Soma in Orgasm (2017) is comprised of seven organ-shaped signs that were not only installed both inside and outside the exhibition spaces in Kassel and Athens for Documenta 14, but were also part of simultaneous performances in both cities. They were also exhibited in Georgia Sagri’s solo exhibition at Kunstverein Braunschweig, while making an appearance at her solo show at Portikus in Frankfurt. The module dismisses the idea of an either/or; in rejecting singularity in favor of the double, conventional spatial hierarchies and determinations are negated. Through the concept of the module, but also within the sculptures themselves, Sagri creates materialized thought experiments where the choice of form and medium create arguments and sites for her propositions and the discussion around them.