Making its North American debut at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Maria Hassabi’s CANCELLED, a performative work for four female performers, moves within a soundscape that emphasizes an endless life span. 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. Being meticulously crafted, CANCELLED 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 on 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 relationship 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.

The duration of the performance is approximately 60 minutes. Performances will take place on September 16 at 1:00 and 6:00 p.m. and on September 17 at 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. 

Performers: Elena Antoniou, Maria Hassabi, Alice Heyward, Shelley Senter
Sound design: Stavros Gasparatos, Maria Hassabi
Outfits: Victoria Bartlett
Production/management: Natasha Katerinopoulos
Project coordinator: Alex J. Mathews
Curator: Noam Segal