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.