Alexandra Pirici
Parthenon Marbles An immaterial version of the sculptural ensemble embodied by five performers, presents a research into the financial and legal implications and the value of the sculptures as cultural capital. Alexandra Pirici’s practice uses performance and choreography, along with sound and enactment, as mediums to question the history surrounding symbolical and sometimes diplomatic objects. She finds her inspiration in the political history of monuments or sculptures and enhances the distorting relationship between the human body and marble, stone, or bronze. Gestures, movements, choreography inspired by these objects are the narrative vehicle to disarm their main interpretation and unveil an often silent story. For Conceal, cover with sand, replicate, translate, restore Alexandra Pirici will propose an open-rehearsal of an ongoing action to be shown, in a final version, in Athens, commenting on the request for restitution of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to the Acropolis Museum, thus questioning the circulation and the financial implications of holding important cultural goods. The textual layer performed as part of the work is drawn from a collaboration with curator and writer Victoria Ivanova. Since her choreography and performing arts studies, Alexandra Pirici’s work has been presented at, among others: the Tate Modern, London (2016); the Berlin Biennale (2016); the Ludwig Museum, Köln (2016); the Temps d’Images International Festival, Cluj (2015); the Van Abbemuseum (2014); Manifesta 10, St-Petersburg (2014); the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); the Romanian Pavillon of the 55th Venice Biennale, (2013). In 2017 she is participating in the decennial international art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Munster. Alexandra Pirici’s work is commissioned and produced for the premises of Future Climates (Antonia Alampi, iLiana Fokianaki) by State of Concept Athens and KADIST and it will premiere in its final version in Athens in April 2017.