Maria Hassabi
GOLDEN

The Breeder is pleased to present Golden, Maria Hassabi’s first solo exhibition at the gallery in Athens. For this presentation the artist continues her work with gold and its manifestation in various materials. This body of work includes paintings, sculptures and photographs using the dancer’s body as the main subject. Hassabi is interested in the paradox between gold, a metal that endures time, and a dancer whose act evaporates the instant it is performed.

Hassabi’s sculptures, photographs and paintings rely on a desire for permanence. The dancer’s body is presented fragmented, contorted and even blurred, yet its stillness, which is at the forefront of her performances as an attempt to invite the viewer to consider the present moment, is now the given. Looking at the objects one can sense the dancer’s presence captured in time and space. These works ultimately challenge distinctions between permanence and ephemerality, presence and absence, wholeness and partialness.

Golden is a continuation from Hassabi’s exhibition in the Spring 2021 at Secession, Vienna, where her live installation HERE took place. As in the past, the artist uses documentation material derived from her performances as a departure point and then employs other mediums to override the limitations that occur within the format of liveness and realness.

Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus) is an artist, choreographer and performer, working with live performance, installation, sculpture, photography and video. Since the early 2000s, she has carved a unique practice that concentrates on stillness and the in-betweenness of bodies in motion, highlighting the relation of the live body to the still image and to the sculptural object. Considering conventions, hierarchies and codes existing in theaters, museums, and public spaces, her acclaimed works always reflect the given context of their presentation and are developed in dialogue with a site’s unique architecture both in terms of materiality and function.

Solo exhibitions and presentations include Secession, Vienna (2021); Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2019); MUDAM, Luxenberg (2019); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018); K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2017-18); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2017); Stegi – Onassis Foundation, Athens (2017); MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015); The Kitchen, New York (2019, 2016, 2013, 2011, 2006); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2014); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2012); Performance Space 122, New York (2007, 2009). Selected group exhibitions and festivals include Museion, Bolzano (2021); River to River Festival, NY (2021, 2017, 2014, 2012); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2020); Performa, NY (2019, 2013, 2009); Serralves Museum, Porto (2019, 2015); documenta14, Kassel (2017); the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Crossing the Line Festival, NY (2016, 2011, 2009); Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (2017, 2016, 2014); ArtSonje, Seoul (2015); Steirischer herbst, Graz (2014); Panorama Festival, Rio de Janeiro (2012) amongst others. Hassabi has received the 2019 Performa Malcolm McClaren Award; 2016 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award; 2015 Herb Alpert Award; 2012 President’s Award for Performing Arts from LMCC; 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship; 2009 Grants to Artists Award from Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and is an Onassis Decade Resident 2019-2029. Maria Hassabi lives in Athens and New York.