Sep 16–Sep 20, 2013

Susan Hefuna and Luca Veggetti: NOTATIONOTATIONS

The world premiere of NOTATIONOTATIONS marks a first-time collaboration between renowned, multimedia artist Susan Hefuna (b. Germany, 1962) and contemporary choreographer Luca Veggetti (b. Italy, 1963). NOTATIONOTATIONS posits the idea that if a line is the trace of a point in motion, then the human body moving through the space of the observed world is also a drawing. Staged over three nights, this event opens and closes with a new video installation by Hefuna of a bustling, lower Manhattan intersection—a literal mapping of people and place that examines movement as something that is both rehearsed and habitual. Sketched onto the floor is an expansive web of chalk lines made by Hefuna (her largest work to date) in advance of an audience; its dramatic creation captured by film. The artist perseveres via the projection, which is screened as Veggetti’s dancers gradually erase the drawn surface through repetitive, physical gestures. The performance culminates in a dynamic display of swooping whorls made by their distilled movements across the floor. The effect is its own form of choreographic documentation.

Special thanks to the dancers Olivia Ancona, PeiJu Chien-Pott, a soloist from the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Gabrielle Lamb.

Susan Hefuna

Multimedia artist Susan Hefuna draws upon her mixed Egyptian and German heritage in her boundary-breaking art, which explores the intersection of location and identity. Often employing the symbolic element of the mashrabiya--a traditional window screen with carved wood latticework found in Islamic architecture--Hefuna plays with notions of viewing and being observed, while at the same time channeling her cultures through her own voice.

In 2009 Hefuna began a site-specific intervention series called Mapping Vienna, which involved such acts as invading the Vienna Opera Ball--an event for the upper class held in a public space--dressed in a black cloak with the words "Patience," "Beautiful," and "Vienna," stitched in large colorful letters. These words are repeated in her installation Patience Beautiful, where the title phrase appears intermixed within the design of a mashrabiya. In her photographs Women Behind Mashrabiya I and II, the blurred image of the artist overlays the patterns in teh window, and her abstract drawings--layered, complex grids--allude to the interiority of cityscapes and constellations.

Hefunas has had solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery and the Sigmund Freud Museum among other venues. Her work has been included in the Venice Biennale, Cairo Biennial, and the International Biennale of Contemporary Art as well as group shows at the Centre de Cultura Contemporania in Barcelona, the Museum of Natural History in Lyon, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African Amercan History, London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Hefuna's work was recently featured in the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Centuryat the Museum of Modern Art.
Luca Veggetti

Curated by Brett Littman and Joanna Kleinberg Romanow

Exhibition Materials

Susan Hefuna and Luca Veggetti: NOTATIONOTATIONS

Press Release: Susan Hefuna and Luca Veggetti

pdf, 406.54kb

Credits

NOTATIONOTATIONS is made possible through the generous support of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Program, which supports risk-taking and innovative collaborations in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg.

Additional funding is provided by Saeb Eigner and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

Past Programs

Sep 18, 2013

Susan Hefuna and Luca Veggetti: NOTATIONOTATIONS