Anastasia Valsamaki presents “as she rests, the wrestler bleeds her promises”, an exhibition curated by Ioanna Gerakidi

On Saturday, February 10th, at 8pm, Anastasia Valsamaki presents “as she rests, the wrestler bleeds her promises”, an exhibition curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. Hosted at opbo studio until March 1st, the show is a presentation of archives, sculptural gestures, films, and words, arising from or responding to the dance performance “W REST L ING”. The performance, conceived and choreographed by Anastasia Valsamaki, will be presented at 9 pm during the opening night.

“W REST L ING” utilises wrestling as a tool to see through the surface of a combat sport and to explore further the seemingly contradictory forces or expressions residing in our ways of acting, enacting, attacking and attracting defense or resistance. It instead aims to unleash the significance of the times, spaces and interactions occurring in-between those modes; to look with them as mechanisms that can feed or disrupt these active dynamics. Thinking through the semantics coming with the verticality of bodies or objects standing or moving, versus their horizontality when laying or standing still, Valsamaki’s work explores the meanings, understandings and interpretations of vitality and alertness, of passivity and inertia, of wrestling and resting.

How do we, human beings, prioritize production over ease or inactivity, idealise proceeding over pausing or staying awake over falling asleep, even when our bodies, minds or souls impose us otherwise? And how can such behaviors, decisions or (in)actions be thought of or be used as parables to think across sociopolitical, environmental, or financial modes, models and paradigms worshiping a nonstop extraction of energy and fuel and love and care, when there’s nothing left, when these graspable or ungraspable commodities, have already been squeezed out or appropriated? How can pauses, breaks and hiatuses allow us to organically touch robust personal transformations, grief over collective alternations, find other ways of striking back or requesting for?

These are some of the questions raised in a work that tries to twist the world, and against all odds, stroke instead of attack, play instead of ambush, dance instead of condemn. Both the choreographed gestures of the five bodies moving and resting in time and space and the traces their presence leaves behind when the performance is over, become a celestial, yet youthful, ecstatic and untamed ritual of sharing anger, sorrow, fear, but also desire, solidarity, kinship. By performing aspects of wrestlers’ fights, “as she rests, the wrestler bleeds her promises” invites us to an acceptance of our contradictions, a close listening of our breathing when in vigilance, an unconditional encounter with our chasms when in turmoil.

Curated and text by Ioanna Gerakidi

“W REST L ING” Contributors
Concept & Choreography: Anastasia Valsamaki
Music & Sound Composition: Jeph Vanger
Dancers: Gavriela Antonopoulou, Nikos Grigoriadis, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Thanos Ragousis, Xenia Stathouli
Dramaturgy: Anastasios Koukoutas
Styling: Nefeli Asteriou
Technical support: Giorgos Antonopoulos
Production: MINDTHELOOP

Created during Anastasia’s Valsamaki Artist Fellowship Program 2020 supported by ARTWORKS and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

Creation and touring are realized with the financial support of the Greek Ministry of Culture.

Info:
opbo studio, 86 Filonos Str., Piraeus, 18536
Exhibition opening: Saturday 10 February 2024, 20.00
Exhibition duration: February 10 – March 1, 2024
Visiting hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12:00-18:00
Free entrance

*Anastasia Valsamaki, Jeph Vanger, Nefeli Asteriou and Ioanna Gerakidi are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows