Cullberg/Alexandra Bachzetsis ^(CHE/GRC) Exposure 24-28 September 2024

Programme

About Alexandra Bachzetsis

Alexandra Bachzetsis is a choreographer and visual artist based in Zurich (CH). Her practice takes place at the intersection of dance, performance, visual arts and theatre, creating a mix of spaces where the body, as an artistic and critical apparatus, can manifest itself. This fundamentally interdisciplinary approach is reflected in her educational background. She studied and graduated at the Zürcher Kunstgymnasium (CH), the Dimitrschule in Verscio (CH), the Performance Education Program at the STUK arts centre in Leuven (BE), and then went on to do postgraduate studies at Das Arts, Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance Studies in Amsterdam (NL). During these years Bachzetsis started working as a dancer in contemporary dance and performance contexts, collaborating with Sasha Waltz & Guests (Berlin) and Les Ballets C. de la B. (Ghent), among others. Collaboration, transference and a multiplicity of voices and bodies have influenced Bachzetsi's work ever since and are often thematised as a method of developing new work in her practice. 

Much of Bachzetsi's work involves choreographies focusing on how popular culture provides source material for gesture, expression, identification and desire while we constantly create and recreate our bodies and how we identify ourselves through them. Within this, she examines the mutual influence between the use of gesture and movement in 'popular' or 'commercial' genres on the one hand (online and social media, fashion, videos, television, etc.) and in the 'arts' on the other (ballet, modern and contemporary dance, photography, performance and so on). For Bachzetsis, the relationship between these different forms and genres produces an investigation of the human body and its potential for transformation. Ultimately, how we all perform and stage our bodies and ourselves - through stereotypes and archetypes, through choices and clichés, through labour and spectacle - is an issue that continues to shape Bachzetsis' work. 

Since Bachzetsis began working independently in 2001, she has created over 30 works that have been shown in theatres, festivals and public spaces around the world. In addition, her work has been exhibited in a variety of contemporary art spaces and museums, including Kunsthaus Zurich (Zurich, 2022), Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 2019), Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2017), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2013 and 2015), Tate Modern (London, 2014), Jumex Museum (Mexico City, 2014) and Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, 2008), as well as a number of international biennials and large-scale exhibitions, such as documenta 14 (Athens and Kassel, 2017), the Biennale of Moving Images (Geneva, 2014), (d)OCUMENTA 13 (Kassel, 2012), and the 5:e Berlin Biennale (Berlin, 2008). Bachzetsis was nominated for the DESTE Prize (2011) and is the winner of the Migros Kulturprozent Jubilee Award (2007), the Swiss Art Award (2011 and 2016) and the Swiss Performance Prize (2012). Her works Chasing a Ghost was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago and has been touring Europe since 2019. Her latest works 2020: Obscene premiered its theatre version in November 2021 at Gessnerallee in Zurich, while the exhibition version was shown for the first time in a solo show in spring 2022 at Kunsthaus Zürich.

Bachzetsis presents its latest work Notebook at Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen in 2023 as an installation that scrutinises, challenges and extends her artistic practices over the past two decades - produced in collaboration with various interlocutors. Bachzetsi's monograph Show/Time/Book Book/Time/Show will be published in 2023, edited by Hendrik Folkerts and designed by Julia Born.