Maria Hassabi
{{Short description|Cypriot artist and choreographer (born 1973)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2024}}
{{Infobox person
| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1973}}
| birth_place = Nicosia, Cyprus
| alma_mater = {{plainlist|
- California Institute of the Arts (BFA)
- Merce Cunningham Studios
}}
| occupation = {{flatlist|
- Performance artist
- choreographer
}}
| awards = {{plainlist|
- Guggenheim Fellowship (2011)
- Alpert Award in Dance (2015)
}}
}}
Maria Hassabi (born 1973) is an artist and choreographer based in the United States. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, she engages in performances she calls "live installations".
Biography
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.{{Cite web |title=Maria Hassabi |url=https://walkerart.org/collections/artists/maria-hassabi/ |access-date=2024-08-31 |website=Walker Art Center}} In 1994, she starred in Steve Hanft's film Kill the Moonlight as Sandra.{{Cite news |title=Maria Hassabi – Bio |url=http://mariahassabi.com/bio/ |access-date=2024-08-31 |work= |language=en-US}}
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"; 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".{{Cite book |last=Brannigan |first=Erin |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.12347133.23 |title=The Persistence of Dance |date=2023 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0-472-07648-2 |series=Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art |pages=176–188 |chapter=Maria Hassabi – Between Sensation and Its Display |doi=10.3998/mpub.12347133.23 |jstor=10.3998/mpub.12347133.23}} She was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists in 2009.{{Cite web |title=Maria Hassabi {{!}} FCA Grant Recipient |url=https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/maria-hassabi/ |access-date=2024-08-31 |website=Foundation for Contemporary Arts}} She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011.{{Cite web |title=Maria Hassabi |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/maria-hassabi/ |access-date=2024-08-31 |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |language=en}} Her 2013 work Intermission was part of the 55th Venice Biennale's joint Cypriot-Lithuanian pavilion.{{Cite web |last=Carrion-Murayari |first=Gary |title=oO becomes Oo and oo: 2 Countries in an Uneven Structure at the Venice Biennale |url=https://www.newmuseum.org/blog/view/oo-becomes-oo-and-oo-2-countries-in-an-uneven-structure-at-the-venice-biennale |access-date=2024-08-31 |website=New Museum |language=en}}
She won the 2015 Alpert Award in Dance.{{Cite web |title=Artist Archive |url=https://herbalpertawards.org/recipients |access-date=2024-08-31 |website=The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts}} In 2016, she held an exhibition at MoMA called Plastic, in which dancers would slowly move throughout the museum's stairs and floors;{{Cite web |title=Maria Hassabi: PLASTIC |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1611 |access-date=2024-08-31 |website=Museum of Modern Art}}{{Cite news |last=Burke |first=Siobhan |date=2016-03-09 |title=‘Plastic,’ at MoMA, Is on the Floor and the Stairs |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/arts/dance/plastic-at-moma-is-on-the-floor-and-the-stairs.html |access-date=2024-08-31 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} 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."{{Cite web |last=Gopnik |first=Blake |date=2016-03-10 |title=Dancer Suffers Art Attack at MoMA |url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maria-hassabi-dancer-at-moma-445952 |access-date=2024-08-31 |website=Artnet News |language=en-US}} From October to November 2023, she held her first solo exhibition in Asia, I’ll Be Your Mirror at Tai Kwun Contemporary.{{Cite news |last=Burke |first=Harry |date=2023-11-17 |title=Maria Hassabi’s Distorted Mirror |url=https://www.frieze.com/article/maria-hassabi-ill-be-your-mirror-2023-review |access-date=2024-08-31 |work=Frieze |language=en |issue=240 |issn=0962-0672}}{{Cite news |last=Yiu |first=Alex |last2=Lentchner |first2=Anna |last3=Masters |first3=HG |title=Roundtable Review: Maria Hassabi’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” |url=https://artasiapacific.com/shows/roundtable-review-maria-hassabi-s-i-ll-be-your-mirror |access-date=2024-08-31 |work=ArtAsiaPacific}}
References
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Category:California Institute of the Arts alumni
Category:Artists from Los Angeles
Category:American performance artists
Category:American women performance artists
Category:American choreographers
Category:American women choreographers