Maria Hassabi
Point Centre for Contemporary Art
September 22, 2018–October 31, 2018Nicosia, Cyprus
Point Centre for Contemporary Art presents Maria Hassabi’s first solo exhibition in Cyprus. A moving image, a photograph, a 5min duration performance script, a sound score, and for the opening night on September 21st, STAGING: solo (2018), performed by Oisín Monaghan, with sound design by Stavros Gasparatos and outfit by Victoria Bartlett.
For over a decade Maria Hassabi has developed a distinct practice centered on the relationship of the body to the image. Her performances and live installations unfold as progressions of austere choreographies, composed of stillness and decelerated movements in space. Oscillating between dance and sculpture, subject and object, live body and still image, they often test conventional rhythms of viewership in the process.
Hassabi’s installation at Point features a collage of materials derived from her recent performative works, STAGING (2017) and STAGING: Solo #2 (2017). These works attempt to be “staged”, precisely planned, organized, and arranged in advance, with their choreographic material meticulously crafted – the performers actions, even their gaze, is subject to counts and cues. Yet the physical side-effects of time and labor, gradually divulge into their own unrehearseable choreographies. Rather than the detailed gestures, postures, and timings, it is the kinesthetic intensities and energies that shape the material of the work, revealing a form that is continuously in progress and always “staging” and “re-staging” itself in an endlessly unfolding manner. For this exhibition, the live performers are removed. Images derived from them get manipulated digitally and are presented as objects, displayed on walls and on the floor – in an effort to see what remains once the element of liveness in process is extracted.
Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus) is a New York based artist and choreographer. Her performances and installations are presented worldwide in theaters, museums, galleries, and public spaces including, Centre Pompidou (Paris); K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf); documeta14 (Kassel); Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); Museum of Modern Art (New York); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); The 55th Venice Biennale (Venice); Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels); ArtSonje (Seoul); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne); steirischer herbst (Graz); Performa (New York); The Kitchen (New York), amongst others. Hassabi has received a 2016 “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production; the 2015 Herb Alpert Award; the 2012 President’s Award for Performing Arts from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship; and a 2009 Grants to Artists Award from Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts.
