Maria Hassabi
I’ll Be Your Mirror
October 13, 2023–November 23, 2023Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
The artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus) has long pioneered live installations that explore the sculptural body, image-making, and the deceleration of time. Frequently involving dancers moving at a glacial, barely perceptible pace, Hassabi’s works confront visitors as living sculptures. Her works bring the performing body into museums, theatres, and public spaces, which shift the boundaries between visitors and performers, subjects and objects.
Maria Hassabi: I’ll Be Your Mirror is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia. Comprising elements of performance, sound, photography and painting, the exhibition brings her pathbreaking practice to Hong Kong, with all works newly commissioned for Tai Kwun’s architectural environment. The central body of work on 3/F gravitates around the production of image through the usage of mirrors dressed in gold, playing with the myriad meanings and representations of gold in ancient and contemporary myths—as a colour in divination, as a symbolic representation of capitalism, or even a kitsch sample from pop culture. The paradox between the immutability of gold and the shifting perceptions of its representation echoes the tensions in Hassabi’s practice—between subjects and objects, dance and sculpture, the live body and still images, the spectacular and the everyday.
Since the early 2000s Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus) has carved a unique artistic practice based on the relationship between the live body, the still image, and the sculptural object. Her works reflect on concepts of time and the human figure, while employing a variety of media to emphasise the complexity of formal organisation. In most of Hassabi’s works the performing body is the main subject, often embedded within imposing installations. Through meticulously crafting her material—every action, even the gaze, is subject to counts and cues—a constant negotiation between the body’s relation to gravity, time and space, reveals the physical side effects of labour, anchoring both dancers’ and viewers’ awareness to the present moment. Her works are always in dialogue with a site’s unique architecture, while conventions and hierarchies common to theatres, museums, and public spaces are taken into consideration. Her sculptures, photography and video works use her live performances as a point of departure, while the use of technology is employed to override the limitations that occur within the format of liveness and realness.
Maria Hassabi has had numerous solo exhibitions and presentations in art institutions and performance spaces around the world, including LUMA Arles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Her works have also been featured in group exhibitions and festivals such as at FRONT Triennial, Cleveland; Performa, New York; documenta14, Kassel; and the 55th Venice Biennale.
Curated by: Xue Tan, with Louiza Ho
Dancers: Marah Arcilla, Elena Antoniou, Sylvie Cox, Li De, Maria Hassabi, Adam Russell Jones, Mickey Mahar, Tasos Nikas, Yuma Sylla, Sara Tan, Solong Zhang
Architectural Study: Maria Maneta, Maria Hassabi
Sound design: Stavros Gasparatos, Maria Hassabi
Clothing design: Victoria Bartlett, Venia Polyhronaki
