Georgia Sagri
Georgia Sagri (b. 1979), Working The No Work, 2011-12 (installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). Mixed media. Collection of the artist; courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London; AD Gallery, Athens; Andreas Melas & Helena Papadopoulos, Athens; Real Fine Arts. Brooklyn; and Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami Beach. Photograph by Matt Whitley
Born in 1979 in Athens, Greece
Lives and Works in New York
Through a series of performances within this evolving installation, Georgia Sagri will work toward making a book—albeit one that she never intends to realize in its traditional physical form—with the central theme of “working the no work.” By inviting philosophers, activists and organizers, artists, and laborers as well as the visiting public to help shape the book’s content by reflecting especially on the radical shifts in political and social life of the present day and recent past, Sagri acknowledges how the role of author has become diffused and the distinctions between individual and group, producer and product, are no longer relevant.
When not activated by performances, her installation—hanging costumes, a magnifying lens, custom-made doors, wooden stairs, the vinyl graphic on the floor and walls, scattered pillows—bears the imprint of the various functions it serves: as a space for book making, a stage for performances, and a setting where actions and interactions have taken place. Videos documenting the conversations and performances that have already occurred along with video clips, film fragments, and mass-media depictions of “work” are also projected in the space. Playing the role of designer/editor/illustrator in unexpected ways, Sagri dedicates herself to the creation of what she refers to as a “live book”—one that follows the editing process typical of book production, but is comprised of disparate elements each containing its own layers of references, all interacting with one another without the final result of finished object.
