Maria Hassabi’s Performing Picasso Paintings

Picasso: Untitled is a project of La Casa Encendida and the Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Foundation (FABA) curated by Eva Franch i Gilabert. The exhibition has the support of the National Commission for the Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso, and the collaboration of the Community of Madrid. The exhibition is part of the official program of the Picasso Celebration 1973-2023, with Telefónica as a collaborating company in Spain.

The performances take place in the four exhibition rooms in real time for visitors to the exhibition on 20 and 21 May.

The piece is part of Picasso. Untitled / With, a public programme that accompanies the show and invites different artists to work with the written material that was produced for the exhibition and translate it into other languages through music, performance or spoken delivery. Maria Hassabi is one of the fifty contemporary artists who have participated in this initiative of retitling Picasso’s works.

Maria Hassabi is an artist and choreographer whose work covers live performances, installation, sculpture, photography and video. Since the early 2000s, she has developed a distinct artistic practice based on the relationship of the live body with still images and sculptural objects. Her works are reflections on the concepts of time and the human figure, employing a variety of media to emphasise the complexity of formal organisation. They have been presented at a variety of venues, including LUMA Arles; OGR Torino; the Secession (Vienna); the Centre Pompidou in Paris; K20 Düsseldorf; the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); MoMA in New York; the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne); The Kitchen (New York); documenta14 Kassel; Performa (New York); and the 55th Venice Biennale. Hassabi has won the Performa 2019 Malcolm Mclaren Award; the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award in 2016; the Herb Alpert Award in 2015; and the LMCC [Lower Manhattan Cultural Council] President’s Award for the Performing Arts in 2012. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 and was awarded an Artist Grant by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2009. She holds a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts.