Hardscapes / Here documents and brings together two exhibition projects by artists Nina Canell and Maria Hassabi. Produced on the occasion of the exhibitions of the same name curated by Samuele Piazza at the OGR Torino, the publication consists of two graphically specular books that merge into a single volume. Essays, unpublished materials and a rich set of photographic materials form the driving force behind two visual narratives that offer new keys to understanding the research of the two artists.
Hassabi's live installation Here calls on visitors to share space and spend time with six performers portrayed in a decelerated rhythmic choreography within a sculptural environment. In constant motion, the dancers contribute to a situation of shifting presence, demonstrating the contestable nature of the "here and now." Immobility and slowing down are thus used both as techniques and as subjects of representation: the performing bodies oscillate between dance and sculpture, subject and object, living body and static image.
Canell's Hardscapes combines two works that focus on the concepts of circulation and transformation as well as on unexpected forms of coexistence. Energy Budget (2017–18), a video that alternates between two subjects: a basement in which a leopard snail crawls over an electrical panel, and the gradual shifting of the frame away from "dragon gates"—portal-like openings in huge buildings on the Hong Kong waterfront. Muscle Memory (16 Tonnes) (2020–21) is a floor sculpture, decomposed and transformed by the density of moving bodies, which literally crumbles under the soles of passing visitors.
In addition to texts by the curator, the publication includes essays by Felicia Leu and Laura Preston, along with a conversation by Maria Hassabi and Nina Canell with Lorenzo Giusti.
Published on the occasion of the epoymous exhibitions at OGR Torino in 2022.
Born 1979 in Växjö (Sweden), Nina Canell lives and works in Berlin. Her installations give concrete expression to the lightness and intangibility of the everyday. The natural materials she presents—water, stone, air, earth, wood, copper—are traversed by electric arcs and heat sources, giving rise to delicate, ephemeral physical reactions that reveal and underscore our innate relationship with our immediate environment. Her work has recently been shown at the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), the Camden Arts Centre (London), the Sydney Biennial, at MoMA and the Swiss Institute (New York), and at the 13th Lyon Biennale.
Maria Hassabi (born 1973 in Cyprus) is an artist and choreographer working with live performance, installation, sculpture, photography and video. Since the early 2000s she has developed a unique practice involved with the relation of the live body to the still image and to the sculptural object, utilizing stillness and the velocity of deceleration as both technique and subject. Her photographic and video works use her live performances as a departure point, while the use of technology is employed to override the limitations that occur within the format of liveness and realness.
