Georgia Sagri

"Painting is touch, therefore my paintings are treatments."

—Georgia Sagri

Practice She says, there is no studio, but spaces, encounters and places of conflict—affective testimonies and ongoing provocations to a banal binary perception of the world. And techniques of openness, no reaction or methodologies but constant practice. She says, some Western cynics call it survival, I refuse that comment.

Techniques (Breathing, Movement, Voice) The Greek word ίαση, in English ‘iasi,’ means ‘recovery,’ it is the time it takes for a body to recuperate from illness back to what it was before with the information that has been acquired by that illness. By altering the tuning of the voice, the body starts to vibrate differently, and some of the organs in pain can be touched. She says, here, motifs attract with a sense of familiarity that breaks down into distortion.

Landscape She says, if theater could be an inclusion of the viewer in a landscape, here, we are viewing the world as an interior dissolved in its exterior sensation. Is it an ethereal atmosphere and a solid body at the same time? How could a body be like that if not through being together with the myriad forces of different beings? This is the virtual, instead of visual, and the non-figurative figure as an imperative.

Pigments Pigments of tone. Blood is not a fuel. Although registered as fuel. She says that we become mechanized and turn ourselves into tools of order, executing what we are supposed to as identities and individuals. Here, I want to go all the way through tuning. Participation of the beetroot. Of the cherry. Of the planet. Tuning as a reciprocal force. Blood is tuning.

Affective Anatomies The act of painting is a way to record the process of touch. Performance is a hybrid medium.

Georgia Sagri (1979, Athens, Greece) lives and works in Athens and New York. She studied music and cello at the National Music School of Athens. She holds a BFA from Athens School of Fine Arts and an MFA from Columbia University, New York.

Her recent institutional solo exhibitions were held at Kunsthalle Friart, Fribourg (2022); Mimosa House, London (2020); de Appel, Amsterdam (2020); Portikus, Frankfurt (2018); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2017); and Kunsthalle Basel (2014). She participated in documenta 14 (2017), Manifesta 11 (2016), Istanbul Biennial (2015), Lyon Biennial (2013), Whitney Biennial (2012), Thessaloniki Biennial (2011), and Athens Biennial (2007). Sagri’s work was included in exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2022); Stedelijk, Amsterdam (2020); and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2016).

Her monograph was published by Sternberg Press in 2018, and her book Stage of Recovery was released in May 2021.

She is professor of Performance at the School of Fine Arts, Athens.