IASI – georgia sagri

IASI

IASI, installation view. Photo by Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk, ©Georgia Sagri

IASI, Breathing (7-1-7) with embryac position / Windface. Photo by Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk, ©Georgia Sagri

Breathing (7-1-7) with embryac position / Windface [sunset], Performance, 1hr, 24 October 2020. Photo by Vasilis Papageorgiou © Georgia Sagri

IASI, installation view. Photo by Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk, ©Georgia Sagri

Ensemble

Name:

IASI

Year:

2021

The first element built for the exhibition is a soft stage – a functional sculpture designed by Georgia Sagri especially for the one-on-one sessions of IASI. It is a modular sculpture with versions at Mimosa House in London and Tavros in Athens. While the specific scale of an oversized bed remains constant in all locations, the artist chooses differently dyed fabric to suit each setting. At de Appel, the deep crimson stage rests on top of the existing stage of the iconic Aula at Broedplaats Lely (formerly Pascal College, built in 1969 by Ben Ingwersen). The installation might give visitors a sense of the recovery of this public theatrical space for the purpose of personal strengthening. The perfect acoustics of the Aula further enhance the reclamation of breath and voice that lie at the heart of Sagri’s approach.

Hanging high in the spacious Aula are Sagri’s full-bodied drawings. The charcoal and chalk pastels applied by the artist’s hands record the exchange of information and energy from the one-on-one sessions in Amsterdam. Together with those created from past sessions in London and in Athens, these drawings function as practical memory traces, as “sensorial references” and as scores for the continuing treatments. They can be apprehended as individual images and as a collective.

During the exhibition, materials from the evolving history of performance art dating back to the 1970s, found in de Appel’s Archive, add depth and historical context to Sagri's pivotal practice. As this evocative ephemera enters into a dialogue with Sagri’s modular stage-sculpture and full-bodied drawings. Here, a number of questions arise:

What is/has been the artist’s role in society? What is/has been the role of the public? Can we conceive of performance art without a sense of spectacle? What traditions of theater and/as therapy remain to be recovered? How do we breathe better together?

Exhibition

de Appel, Amsterdam

Unit