Georgia Sagri may be most famous, or infamous, for squatting in Manhattan’s Artists Space last fall with 10 or so other artists—a somewhat puzzling, some would say self-aggrandizing spinoff of Occupy Wall Street. Maintaining that both nonprofit and for-profit galleries are capitalist constructs, the group’s critical aims appeared misdirected nonetheless. Far from Gagosian Gallery, Artists Space seemed the wrong space to occupy, and Sagri, uncharacteristically dogmatic, seemed to be biting the very meager hand that fed her. Taking a cue from Fluxus and other avant-garde movements, Sagri makes a point of destabilizing such fixed positions, rendering events, texts, and subjects contingent and ill-defined. Reformulating their relations, Sagri’s objects and performances push these categories to their inchoate limits, often undercutting her own agenda in the process.
The same is true of Sagri’s Whitney Biennial performances. They took place within the Sondra Gilman Gallery, the floor of which was partly covered in white vinyl featuring clip art–like images of coffee cups, overlapping shapes, and gridded lines. A laptop, cheap speakers, and pillows were spread across the space, while two large, flimsy cardboard structures representing ornate doorways stood toward the back. On the far wall, a range of garments and accessories, designed in collaboration with Shabd Simon-Alexander and featuring screen prints of Sagri’s naked body, hung on hooks. Sagri slipped these on and off to humorous effect, literally wearing herself on her sleeve. The same could be said of the performance itself, which took its own context as part of the subject matter. Before it began, she repeatedly called out to a security guard to close a stairway door, as if she were being ignored. She comically slowed down, stuttered, and repeated the request for several minutes. Rendering it a representational gesture, it became clear the performance had already begun. Further deconstructing the thin line between action and representation, she recorded herself coughing or talking, intermittently playing it back and tweaking its audibility. In their almost Brechtian tactics, these feedback loops were perhaps the most interesting parts of the performance. Combined with movements that emphasized female gender roles—such as when she walked through the cardboard doors with a different, forced, wifelike smile each time—her critical appraisals of societal conventions could be charming and likable. At over an hour, though, the schtick wore thin, and one might’ve hoped for more ambitious and cogent results during that time. As it was, the casual Whitney visitor departed feeling a little baffled. Spread out over several months, though, with a publication as an end result, Sagri’s performances might offer meatier surprises.
This article appears in the June issue of Modern Painters magazine.