I’ll Be Your Mirror, Maria Hassabi’s first solo exhibition in Asia, confronts the malleability of an image. The image of the dancer and that of the viewer; the images that surface in a scheme of reflections on gold mirroring objects. Hassabi brings together her practice of choreography, sound, sculpture, photography, and painting, with two interconnected live installations: White Out, and I’ll Be Your Mirror, after which the exhibition is titled.

 White Out is covered in white carpet, showered in bright white light. Two identical gold mirror benches are placed deliberately to face the surrounding walls, referencing museum benches intended for visitors to view the art on the walls. Yet the walls are empty. A single dancer installed on a bench embodies a sculpturesque physicality; and shuffle themselves from one place of pause to the next, materializing uncomfortable and even contorted positions.  Twists and turns occur on top, underneath and around the bench, finding an entangled body on a seemingly endless loop.  A quest for rest, for a place to be, to become, to breathe.  Small white speakers are scattered around the room and a large photograph is draped over one of the plinths. Reflections occur on the mirror surfaces across the space, portraying partial body parts of the dancer, the viewer and the installation.

I’ll Be Your Mirror, installed in the following gallery, accelerates the work’s orientation to the image through the calculated use of mirrors. Large and small strips of gold mirror panels cover the walls and floors, multiplying the dancer’s image, making the plurality of the self and its distorted reflections apparent. The dancer takes on multiple forms, overlapping with the reflections of visitors who step into the frame of the work and are (in)voluntarily exhibited as art subjects, beyond their intentional role as viewers.

With these works, Hassabi invites us to ponder the plasticity of one’s own image. She urges us to reclaim a sensitivity that has been diminished by our modern methods of absorbing and interpreting visual stimuli.  These stimuli highlight a fragmented state of existence, where our physical responsiveness is overridden by our digital existence.

Curated by Xue Tan with Louiza Ho

Dancers: Marah Arcilla, Elena Antoniou, Sylvie Cox, Li De, Maria Hassabi, Adam Russell Jones, Mickey Mahar, Tasos Nikas, Yuma Sylla, Sara Tan, Solong Zhang

Architectural Study: Maria Maneta, Maria Hassabi
Sound Design: Stavros Gasparatos, Maria Hassabi
Clothing Design: Victoria Bartlett, Venia Polyhronaki

SHOWS

13 October – 26 November, 2023

CREDITS

Commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong