Making its North American debut at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Maria Hassabi’s CANCELLED, a 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, which is meticulously crafted, evokes and questions the subtle interchanges of power between subjects.
Since the early 2000s Hassabi has developed a unique artistic practice based on the relationship between the live body, the still image, and the sculptural object. Hassabi’s works reflect upon 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. In the context of the CMA’s Ames Family Atrium, CANCELLED invites visitors to pause and take note of their own relationships to time, space, and the images that infiltrate their daily experience.
Hassabi’s methods for slowing down perception mirror FRONT International 2022’s curatorial attention to the long time frames that meaningful change—whether on a personal or social level—often requires. –EL
Performers: Elena Antoniou, Maria Hassabi, Alice Heyward, Shelley Senter
Sound design: Stavros Gasparatos, Maria Hassabi
Outfits: Victoria Bartlett
Production Management: Natasha Katerinopoulos
