SoloShow
‘Less than 3% of the artists in the Met. Museum are women, but 83% of the nudes are female.’ This is the well-known slogan used by the Guerilla Girls. In his book Ways of Seeing, John Berger demonstrates brilliantly that in Western painting these nude women have been depicted differently from men. He puts traditional images of the female nude alongside those in porn and advertising magazines: the poses are identical, the looks equally seductive to the (male) viewer.
The Cypriot Maria Hassabi, who lives in New York and is appearing in our country for the first time, has made this portrayal of the female body in art and popular culture the subject of her SoloShow. She has merged hundreds of iconic images seamlessly together and with aesthetic precision and extreme physicality developed them into a live installation.
"Gazing at this exquisitely designed living sculpture, you also feel your own body straining with Hassabi, and in the slow friction between these two views, mysterious emotions ignite." – Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
direction, choreography Maria Hassabi | sound design James Lo | lighting design Joe Levasseur & Maria Hassabi | dramaturgy Scott Lyall, Marcos Rosales | set design Scott Lyall, Maria Hassabi | production manager Meghan Finn | co-production Performance Space 122, Performa 09, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art | support National Performance Network Creation Fund, Manhattan Community Arts Fund, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs | administered by the LMCC and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston
