2024 – georgia sagri

The Cynics Republic

at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (13/11/2024 - 01/12/2024)

The exhibition ‘The Cynics Republic’ offered a counter-narrative of the history of performance. It looked at the emergence of ‘performative practice’ from Antiquity onwards and seeked to recover the relevance of the values of ancient cynicism – truth, self-sufficiency, endurance, sobriety and free sexuality – in the context of today’s social and ecological challenges. ‘The Cynics Republic’ offered visitors the chance to experience an exhibition constructed as a score and was renewed on a daily basis over the course of three weeks thanks to the use of dematerialized resources (scores, protocols, films and sound pieces) from the national collections of the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap) and the Kontakt collection in Vienna.

Exhibition score by Pierre Bal-Blanc.

Georgia Sagri participated in the exhibition The Cynics Republic with two performances: "Deep Listening" (2001/2023) on November 25th and "Solo Nature Study Notes, Athens version" (1969-2019) on November 27th, 2024.

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Georgia Sagri, "Deep Listening" (2001-2023), 2024, The Cynics Republic, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Photo by: Jeff Wall Production ©Georgia Sagri

Georgia Sagri, "Deep Listening" (2001-2023), 2023, The Cynics Republic, 2024, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Photo by: Jeff Wall Production ©Georgia Sagri

Georgia Sagri, "Solo – Nature Study Notes – 1969-2019 ", 2019, The Cynics Republic, 2024. Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Photo by: Jeff Wall Production ©Georgia Sagri

Georgia Sagri, "Solo – Nature Study Notes – 1969-2019 ", 2019, The Cynics Republic, Palais de Tokyo, 2024.Paris. Photo by: Jeff Wall Production ©Georgia Sagri

In the Context of the Collection: Georgia Sagri: Case_O. Between Wars

at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz (20/09/2024 - 09/02/2025)

Running from September 2024 to February 2025, Case_O. Between Wars examined how wars—both internal and external—shape identities, societies, and histories. The exhibition continues Georgia Sagri's ongoing “Cases” series following Case_L at Kunsthalle Friart, Fribourg (2022). In Case_L, she focused on physiological responses to anxiety and panic attacks—recurring themes in her research practice, IASI (Greek for "recovery"). This series explored wounding and healing, exhaustion and recovery, with Case_O centered on the remnants of conflict, trauma, and the potential for regeneration.

In Case_O.Between Wars, the fruitage of IASI sessions inform much of the exhibition’s material. By incorporating six art informel works from the Veronika and Peter Monauni collection, presented alternately with new works alongside existing pieces of hers, she initiated this juxtaposition as an acknowledgement of the ongoing global conflict and stagnation. She attempts to open a sociopolitical and historical wound and touch upon it, aiming to explore new forms of recovery and treatment—perhaps an epistemological slippage.

Central to the exhibition was the sculpture Dynamis | Soma in Orgasm as Sex (2017), 2023, a work initially conceived for documenta 14, which she repaired after it was damaged during public display, re-presented as a new art work in her solo exhibition Oikonomia in 2023. This aluminum sculpture, depicting united male and female sex organs, serves as both the starting point and anchor for Case_O. Here, orgasm is the "structural methodology" of the work, an approach that outdoes traditional conceptions of the body, sexuality, and economy. The body is a site of resistance and a medium through which societal structures that attempt to define us are confronted and transcended.

The exhibition was a Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein production curated by Christiane Meyer-Stolland and Letizia Ragaglia.

Performance: CITY An integral part of the exhibition was the new performance CITY, that premiered alongside renowned New York actor Jim Fletcher at the exhibition's opening on Thursday, 19 September, at 5 pm. This was her first-ever written duet performance that confronts themes of resilience, war, and internal conflict—destruction and renewal—encouraging the audience to reflect on their relationship to war, memory, and survival. More than just a performance, CITY functioned as a living sculpture within the exhibition, inviting participants into a deeply personal and communal experience.

Publication & Discussion The exhibition accompanies a publication Case_O, featuring contributions from Christina Lehnert, Letizia Ragaglia, Christiane Meyer-Stoll, and Mayra Rodríguez Castro. This publication offers insight into the intellectual and visceral layers of the exhibition, with installation views and images of the performance CITY. The catalogue presentation, including a discussion between Lehnert, Ragaglia, and Georgia took place on 6 February 2025.

Powered by Onassis Foundation

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In the Context of the Collection: Georgia Sagri: Case_O. Between Wars, installation view. Photo by Alicia Olmos Ochoa, © the artist / Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein

Georgia Sagri, City, 2024, performance, 19 September 2024, 40 min., Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Photo by: Sandra Maier, © Georgia Sagri

Georgia Sagri, City, 2024, performance, 19. September 2024, 40 min., Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. Photo by: Sandra Maier, © Georgia Sagri

Facade Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein: Georgia Sagri, Deep Cut, 2018, Photo by: Sandra Maier, © Georgia Sagri / Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein

space of togetherness, NEON

at Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece | School of Athens – Irene Papas, Athens (09/09 - 20/10/2024)

NEON presented the exhibition space of togetherness, at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece | School of Athens – Irene Papas from 9 September to 20 October 2024.

Georgia Sagri explores political, social, philosophical, and ecological issues, pushing the boundaries of bodily experiences. Her practice includes sculpture, sound, and installation with an emphasis on the economy of means, seeking empowerment, recovery, and collective care through her performance art. IASI is her ongoing research project, part of Sagri's artistic practice, which began ten years ago and evolves in her studio, ΥΛΗ[matter]HYLE in Athens. As part of her personal research, she conducts individual sessions with participants who respond to an open call. These sessions are based on techniques she employs for preparation and recovery from her performances, utilizing breathing, movement, and vocal training. The sessions take place on a specially designed soft stage, both a sculpture and a welcoming space, a kind of shell. The necessity of the ‘stage of recovery’ stems from Georgia Sagri's belief that: 'we all live our lives on stage, performing endlessly. The "Stage of Recovery" is a space where participants can, for a while, free themselves from the need to perform for others and themselves. There, they can feel safe and liberated from any audience.’ As part of the post-session process, Sagri uses sensory impressions of accumulated bodily experiences as references to create works and capture the body's memory. Works that emerged from previous individual sessions complemented the exhibition's installation. They hovered in the space and functioned as memory traces and sensory references for the ongoing sessions.

Further more the exhibition included the video-recorded performance "Breathing", which Sagri revived from her earlier presentation in 2003, in her solo exhibition Oikonomia in 2023. Here, the artist again applied her practice of recovery. Through this process, Sagri comments on wear and healing, emphasizing the value of recovery in art and life, underscoring that healing is the most fundamental form of economy. A series of pencil sketches from recent years were displayed directly from the artist's notebooks. These forms or mental states capture a transitional state, a state of transformation and suspension.

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Georgia Sagri, Windface, 2020 Charcoal and colored charcoal on paper, various metallic components, 300 x 196 cm, Photo by: Natalia Tsoukala, ©Georgia Sagri

Georgia Sagri, Breathing (2003), 2024, Ink and calligraphy ink on handmade paper, HD video with sound, looped, 40 x 80 cm, 185 x 185 cm, Photo by: Natalia Tsoukala, ©Georgia Sagri

space of togetherness NEON, installation view, Photo by: Natalia Tsoukala, © NEON

KölnSkulptur #11 – Body Manoeuvres

at Skulpturenpark Köln, Cologne (23/7/24–23/7/26)

For more than 25 years, Skulpturenpark Köln has been exhibiting sculptures by outstanding contemporary artists. Every two years, a curator is invited to explore current questions and emerging developments in contemporary sculpture within the framework of KölnSkulptur. The public park is a unique venue at the dynamic interface between urban life and nature, providing a platform for internationally acclaimed artists to create new works that are intimately tied to the exhibition’s distinctive context, and the special location between the Rhine River, Cologne Zoo, and the Flora and Botanical Garden Cologne. For the 11th edition the appointed curator Nicolas Dietrich refelects on the sculptures as dynamic elements insistently bear witness to their varied surrounding and even reproduce a particular body image. The invited artists Olga Balema, Marte Eknaes, Judith Gothe, Judith Hopf, Paulina Olowska, Georgia Sagri, Frances Scholz, Peter Wachtler attmept to introduce the body into the materiality of their works in order to negotiate individual positions in relation to the surrounding landscape. Through skillful manoeuvres , that require a change of movement or direction, they open up new ways of seeing the human body and its realtion to the world. Speicifically, Georgia Sagri participates with the sculptural installation "Sitting with my Breath" (2024). The sculptures feature two park benches obtained by the artsist from the municipality of Athens and relocated to the Sculpture Park in Cologne. The benches have been uiquely modified to each include a hand-blown glass component in the shape of a large, blush-tinted bubble. For Sagri, the glass element is a physical manifestation of the moment of breath, which comes from 'observing the act of breathing and giving it a reality in blown glass'. The sculptures invite visitors to take a seat on either of the two, a more open-ended organisation of movement: offering a place for the passr-by to sit, stop, pause, recollect and rest. At the same time the descicion to present such a fragile material on public view without any support or protective structure deliberately opens up the work to vunerability and chance. Sagri presents this 'fragile monument', exposed to accidental situations or deliberate actions, as a gesture of trust.

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Georgia Sagri, Sitting with my breath(2024), KölnSkulptur #11, Georgia Sagri, photo: Mareike Tocha

Georgia Sagri, Sitting with my breath(2024), KölnSkulptur #11,Georgia Sagri, photo Mareike Tocha

DEO Projects: My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls

at Vessa, Chios island, Greece (6/7–8/9/24)

The exhibition My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls explores the space between movement and inertia, silence and noise, the “inside” and the “outside”, listening to areas where time itself stands still. The artists juxtapose their different artistic voices with echoes of the medieval architecture and atmosphere of Vessa, presenting a multimedia poetic narrative in a labyrinthine form. Drawing parallels between the stillness of the village and the numbness that often accompanies unresolved trauma, they walk side by side with the visitor along paths of healing. Reflecting the pathologies of the global, Vessa stands as a reference point to the resilient spirit of communities around the world and their dreams to forge new paths. The exhibition My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls is a peripatetic journey that asks us to look within ourselves and at the world we inhabit. The parallel programme of events includes trekking, a literary workshop, a concert, guided tours and educational activities. Participating artists: Ahmet Doğu Ipek, Andreas Lolis, Francis Offman, Malvina Panagiotidi, Georgia Sagri, Socratis Socratous, Hale Tenger, Antrea Tzourovits

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Georgia Sagri, Sitting with my breath(2024) DEO Projects ,Vessa 2024, photo: Nikos Alexopoulos

Skowhegan Visiting Faculty

at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Maine, US (9-16/7/24)

From June 9-16 Georgia Sagri was invited to be one of the six Resident Faculty Artists at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. As a visiting faculty member she conducted an intensive three day studio practice-based workshop centered on recovery: exhaustion, pause, and rest. Through a variety of body treatments, participants delved into the physical and emotional nuances of these states, with a particular emphasis on integrating the concept of recovery into their own artistic practices. This workshop, designed to prioritize group dynamics and foster a collaborative learning environment, created a space of meaningful interaction and shared exploration. On June 12th the artist delivered an in-depth talk about her work, delving into the concepts, methodologies, and inspirations behind her multidisciplinary work (performance, sculpture, installation). This session allowed students to engage in a Q&A and plan one-to-one studio visits and group discussions.

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Georgia Sagri, Lecture, 2024, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, U,S. Photo: Zhang Daiqing

Georgia Sagri, IASI | Stage of Recovery (workshop), 2024, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. Photo: Zhang Daiqing

Extractive Realities and Ecological Resonances

at [SiC] and ΥΛΗ[matter]HYLE, Athens (4/7/24)

On the 4th of July, 25 students and professors from a variety of arts and design disciplines, participants of the Shared Campus Summer School titled ‘Extractive Realities and Ecological Resonances’. Initially the group attended a lecture of Georgia Sagri that took place in [SIC] Space for International Cooperation, becoming familiar with the contemporary artists work and practices. Afterwards visited ΥΛΗ[matter]HYLE, Sagri's studio and artist's run space, and had the opportunity to see and discuss in depth on her practice. Since ΥΛΗ[matter]HYLE is a space that aims to bring together art, politics and sciences primarily through practices of care and social empathy, the visit aimed to inspire the participants to translate their field work and practice into based artistic responses. The program aimed to investigate and map extractivist processes in Aspropyrgos and Elefsina, to develop and test creative tools to critically respond to the complexity of what defines the processes of resource exploitation beyond its purely material effects.

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Extractive Realities and Ecological Resonances, 2024, ΥΛΗ[matter]HYLE, photo: Xenarios Markos

Basel Social Club 2024

at Predigerhof Social Hub | Mathis-Hof Social Hub, Basel (9-16/7/24)

The 2024 edition of Basel Social Club brings together an exhibition by local and international artists, a program of performances and many culinary offerings. Artistic interventions are positioned throughout the fields, between the barns, and amongst the trees, responding to this year’s ecological emphasis. Landscape, agriculture, and farm animals are core elements of this year’s edition, with our host farmers as active participants. “The piece Dynamis: Soma in orgasm exhibited in Documenta 14 in Athens and in Kassel (2017) acts as a reminder that the social exists. The orgasm is the work’s structural methodology. Sexual encounter for all living creatures demands four stages: excitement, plateau, peak (orgasm), and resolution. The sculptures involved in the work evoke organs, and when they go out in the public, on the streets, that’s the moment of the orgasm, and that’s why the sculptures are called Soma in orgasm; as leg, as hand, as brain, as ear, as heart, as breast, as sex. The excitement in the piece is the emotional shaping, and the shape of the training, the breathing patterns, and the shape of the sculptures, the shape of the work. The plateau is the moment when this shape makes a trajectory with other trainings, with different forms and others, and of course when this takes place the orgasm happens and the organs go out. The resolution is when in the end we all gather to talk and to recall. Dynamis was the central character: Dynamis is orgasmic force, not exactly strength, and not exactly power. The force that makes people transform, change their lives – personally but also socially. So, it’s not the orgasm of sexual intercourse, it’s the orgasmic force, which makes people come together and change the course of their lives. The orgasmic force is the space and time we can give to each other to understand our differences, where we actually understand what needs to be transformed. It’s also the political or social moments that we understand as revolutions.” –Georgia Sagri

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Georgia Sagri, Dynamis: Soma in orgasm (2017) ,Basel Social Club 2024, photo: Gina Folly

Expanded Scenography, Performance and Public Space Conference

at The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Library, Athens (17 - 20/4/24)

Georgia Sagri, “Stage of Recovery” Lecture

The work features a medium-sized stage, with dimensions of 250 cm by 250 cm and a height of 65 cm. Four large, thick pillows are placed on top, attached to the base, and securely covered with cotton fabric. It can accommodate the activities of the participant and sometimes myself and is only used during one-on-one sessions. During the sessions, the participant is on the stage, mainly alone, exposing themselves, and their condition, on the stage, as they are accustomed to doing in everyday life, with a slight difference: here they work on the condition that caused them pain. I am around the stage, and I can see what is happening, and how the movements progress. Sometimes I will ask the participant to repeat a technique, to continue, to take time and rest. The stage is soft, it is there to remind them that there may be a place that can be soft and easy, a place where, instead of performing a social role, they can release the tension created by that same role they have created for themselves to perform in their daily lives. Instead of creating even greater difficulty than they already have, the process helps them navigate ways to release difficulties. What started in the past with my need to prepare and recover from physically and mentally demanding performance works gradually became a study of the physical, pathological conditions of the body in the hyper-capitalist era that condemns us to autoimmune diseases, stress, discomfort, asthma, insomnia, panic, anxiety, fatigue, nausea, eating disorders, mania, paranoia, arthritis, depression, addiction, to name but a few. Over the years, I realized that some of my techniques (breathing, movement, voice) could help others build their self-recovery routine. If in the past this practice was a preparatory part of my creative process within the medium of performance, it is now a research practice that I share in the form of individual sessions in my studio.

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Expanded Scenography, Performance and Public Space Conference Poster, 2024

Book presentation: Georgia Sagri “Stage of Recovery”

at Hyper Hypo, Athens (presentation 1/2/24, exhibition 1-10/2/24)

On Thursday, February 1, 2024, Hyper Hypo hosed the first Athens presentation of the book Stage of Recovery by the artist, activist, educator and author Georgia Sagri. For the event, Sagri read and discussed selections from the book (including newly translated English to Greek texts) and signed copies. The book was first published by Divided in 2021.

“Stage of Recovery is a creative journey that invites the reader to reflect on and reimagine society. This book proposes a singular bio-aesthetic, an original way of living with each other, against the ever more delirious diktats of planetary techno-capitalism.”

Alongside the book presentation, an exhibition of drawings produced from pigments of various organic and synthetic materials was on view in the project space until 10/02/24.

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Hyper Hypo poster for the ''Stage of Recovery'' book presentation, 1/2/24

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below

at Venue Old Olive Mill, Elefsina (performance 13/1/24, exhibition 18/11/23 - 11/2/24)

On Saturday 13 January at 19.00, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents the performance This is a Party by Georgia Sagri in the context of the group exhibition of contemporary art Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below.

The acclaimed visual artist reconstitutes and reactivates her work, which was first presented in 2006 at the Panic Room exhibition of the DESTE Foundation. She offers the body as an archive of memory and experience, negotiating the relationship between politics and movement. During the performance, the sound of the artist’s voice echoes extracts from her teenage diaries and from the book Call by the political group Invisible Committee, forming an internal dialogue that contributes to the soundscape of the action, which is constantly repeated. A distant dance that seems to be never-ending.

[..This is a party A collection of places, infrastructures, dreams, nightmares, bodies, thoughts and desires. Desires that circulate among us among the places we move and meet. What about, the formation of sensibility as a force. The sensual of the sensitive Of the sensitive sensuality The relationship as no way meeting from the accident to the no resisting full ending Or starting again and again..]

From November 18 to February 11, 2024, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents the group exhibition Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below featuring the participation of acclaimed artists from Greece and abroad and showcasing a series of new productions, curated by Panos Giannikopoulos.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below explores the political dynamics of the body in motion from a simultaneously geological and cultural underground point of departure. Alchemical wanderings from the historical past towards mythology and a post-industrial present culminate in a delirious dance. Inebriation, intoxication, revulsion, euphoria, release, vent, and ascent; a circular path from the body to the ground and back again. The exhibition’s narrative unfolds through the myths and history of the city of Elefsina and its Mysteries, with dance serving as a means of climax, a sacred ritual, and a method for exploring concepts of death and loss. In Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below, we witness dance and its affinity with the ailing body or even itself as illness and therapy, dance in a state of crisis, as exhaustion that brings pleasure displacing social exhaustion, as escape and counteraction.

Participating artists: Theodoros Giannakis / Viktor Gogas & Kostas Kostopoulos / Captain Stavros / Lito Kattou / Petros Moris / Nkisi / Katerina Papazissi / Georgia Sagri / Yorgos Sapountzis / Baratto & Mouravas / Flux Office / Greek Visions / Klaus Jurgen Schmidt / Odete / Diana Policarpo / Wu Tsang

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Mystery 151 - This is a Party performance at Elefsina, (2024)

Mystery 151 - This is a Party performance at Elefsina, (2024) photo by Alexandros Theodoridis