Maria Hassabi (born 1973) is a Cypriot performance artist and choreographer based in the United States. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, she engages in performances she calls "live installations".

Maria Hassabi
Born1973 (age 50–51)
Nicosia, Cyprus
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Performance artist
  • choreographer
Awards

Biography

edit

Maria Hassabi was born in 1973 in Nicosia and raised there, as well as in Dubai and Los Angeles, and educated at the California Institute of the Arts, where she got a BFA in performance and choreography (1994), and at Merce Cunningham Studios in New York City.[1] In 1994, she starred in Steve Hanft's film Kill the Moonlight as Sandra.[2]

After starting with dance performances throughout the city such as Dead Is Dead (2004) and Still Smoking (2006), she started moving beyond theatres, later calling them "live installations";[1] In her book The Persistence of Dance, Erin Brannigan said that term "makes a clear statement about the intermedial position she takes through adopting visual art language that stresses the situated, durational aspect of her works".[3] She was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists in 2009.[4] She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011.[5] Her 2013 work Intermission was part of the 55th Venice Biennale's joint Cypriot-Lithuanian pavilion.[6]

She won the 2015 Alpert Award in Dance.[7] In 2016, she held an exhibition at MoMA called Plastic, in which dancers would slowly move throughout the museum's stairs and floors;[8][9] it was featured in Artnet's March 10, 2016, edition of The Daily Pic, with Blake Gopnik saying that "the performers’ slo-mo “interface” has to be read as a comment on how sped-up the action of average visitors has become, at MoMA and most other museums."[10] From October to November 2023, she held her first solo exhibition in Asia, I’ll Be Your Mirror at Tai Kwun Contemporary.[11][12]

References

edit
  1. ^ a b "Maria Hassabi". Walker Art Center. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  2. ^ "V/A feat. Beck – Kill The Moonlight (CD/DVD, JAPAN)". Pop Catastrophe. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  3. ^ Brannigan, Erin (2023). "Maria Hassabi—Between Sensation and Its Display". The Persistence of Dance. Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art. University of Michigan Press. pp. 176–188. doi:10.3998/mpub.12347133.23. ISBN 978-0-472-07648-2 – via JSTOR.
  4. ^ "Maria Hassabi | FCA Grant Recipient". Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  5. ^ "Maria Hassabi". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  6. ^ Carrion-Murayari, Gary. "oO becomes Oo and oo: 2 Countries in an Uneven Structure at the Venice Biennale". New Museum. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  7. ^ "Artist Archive". The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  8. ^ "Maria Hassabi: PLASTIC". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  9. ^ Burke, Siobhan (9 March 2016). "'Plastic,' at MoMA, Is on the Floor and the Stairs". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  10. ^ Gopnik, Blake (10 March 2016). "Dancer Suffers Art Attack at MoMA". Artnet News. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  11. ^ Burke, Harry (17 November 2023). "Maria Hassabi's Distorted Mirror". Frieze. No. 240. ISSN 0962-0672. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  12. ^ Yiu, Alex; Lentchner, Anna; Masters, HG. "Roundtable Review: Maria Hassabi's "I'll Be Your Mirror"". ArtAsiaPacific. Retrieved 31 August 2024.