Cancelled

Maria Hassabi

HYBRID Box Performance 2022/23

Maria Hassabi’s CANCELLED, a performative work for four female performers, moves within a soundscape that emphasizes an endless lifespan. The choreography utilizes Hassabi’s signature style of stillness and deceleration, and displays representational female poses based on mannerisms throughout history. The use of verticality and frontality create a form of resistance both as a metaphor and as a reality, reflecting on ideas that are directly related to the work’s title. CANCELLED being meticulously crafted, evokes and questions the subtle interchanges of power between subjects.

Since the early 2000s Hassabi has carveda unique artistic practice based on the relationship between the live body, the still image, and the sculptural object. Hassabi’s works reflect on concepts of time and the human figure, while employing a variety of media to emphasize the complexity of formal organization. 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 labor, anchoring both dancers’ and viewers’ awareness to the present moment. The initial invitation of a spectacle exhausts itself, and a common corporeality and radical intimacy is exposed.

www.mariahassabi.com

Duration: 1 hr.

 

Performers: Elena Antoniou, Maria Hassabi, Alice Heyward, Shelley Senter

Sound design: Stavros Gasparatos, Maria Hassabi

Outfits: Victoria Bartlett

Production / Management: Eva Theofanidou

CANCELLED was produced by the LUMA Foundation and premiered at LUMA ARLES as a result of the Artist-in-Residency Program. It was co-commissioned by and received additional support from FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, in partnership with VIA Art Fund.

 Hassabiis an artist and choreographer working with live performance, installation, sculpture, photography and video. Since the early 2000s she has developeda unique artistic practice based on the relationship between the live body, the still image, and the sculptural object. Hassabi’s works reflect on concepts of time and the human figure, while employing a variety of media to emphasize the complexity of formal organization.Solo exhibitions and presentations include LUMA Arles (2022); OGR, Turin (2022); Secession, Vienna (2021); Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2019); MUDAM, Luxenberg (2019); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018); K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2017-18); OCC Stegi (2017), Athens; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2017); 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). Her works have also been featured in group exhibitions and festivals such as at FRONT Triennial, Cleveland (2022); 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); documeta14, 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 OnassisResident 2019-2022. She’s based in NY and Athens.

HYBRID Biennale 2022 #BODY