Zachary Fabri is participating in:
Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art Until January 4, 2015 in Walker Art Center Minneapolis.
The Big Pay Back, 2009.
ABOUT
Through his performances captured for the video lens, Zachary Fabri often addresses the relationship between the role of the individual and the integrity of community. Location and chance constitute critical elements in his interventions. For example, in My High Fructose Corn Syrup and White Flour Constipation (2007), Fabri, quietly enters a public intersection in Reykjavik, Iceland, carrying carbonated drinks and a sack of white flour. Over the course of several minutes, Fabri stops traffic as he engages onlookers with his ritualized actions–a series of seizure-like movements in which he drinks then gargles soda, holding the liquid in his mouth while he contorts his body backwards. Before the action is over, as Fabri is covering himself with soda, he baptizes himself with flour, kneeling then falling to the ground. This confrontational approach serves to create tension in the work. Fabri uses his body as a mediator between his conceptual ideas and the communities in which he presents them. In the work on view here, he performs the implications of excess and the lack of proper nutrition. His street performances position him in the tradition of guerilla-theater, which happens without any forewarning or pre-staging, and has been used throughout the history of performance art to address political and social issues.
Forget me not (performance).
Biography
Zachary Fabri received his BFA in graphic design from New World School of the Arts in Miami in 2000. He continued his studies at Hunter College, where he received an MFA in 2007. His solo exhibitions include Marrow in the Morrows, Third Streaming, New York (2012), and Not Cool: Out of Balance, Galerie Open, Berlin (2010). His group exhibitions includeFore, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2012); Civil Disobedience, White Box, New York (2010); Rockstone and Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT (2009); Metro Poles: Art in Action, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY (2008); Neo Neo Dada, Rush Arts Gallery, New York (2007); Dark Matter, Galerie Open, Berlin (2007); Momentum: Nordic Biennial for Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway (2006); Domestic Affairs, Projekt 0047, Berlin (2006); and What Means Free?, Chelsea Hotel, New York (2005).
Fortune Bones, 2014 (performance).
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Zachary Fabri’s Performance Art Is Silent but Confrontational
Andrea Richard Thursday, May 8 2014
Dressed in short blue jogging shorts, a tank top, and sneakers, Zachary Fabri clamored up the famous steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When he got to the African wing, surrounded by ancient, glass-encased objects, he pulled an orange skullcap over his dreadlocks and began silently doing a ritualistic dance. The movements looked like a fast tai chi — his feet stepping and his arms swooping as though he were collecting invisible objects from the air. Some museumgoers crouched down and watched, transfixed; others nervously looked away; yet others walked past and pretended not to notice him.
Kneel (performance).
“A lot of my work doesn’t involve too much talking.”
In the lobby, the museum’s security guards caught up with Fabri and yelled: “You need to leave the premises right now!” The confused bunch surrounded him, and he slowly dropped to his knees, remaining in character and submitting to the guards. “They looked like they were in a position of power and violence over me,” recalls Fabri.
Unaware that this was an artistic performance, the guards continued to surround Fabri, who responded with a simple, “I’m not doing anything. But OK, I’ll leave.” He was not shy about provoking unsuspecting passersby or even security guards but preferred not to get arrested. Still, he took his sweet time inching steadily to the door.
The confrontation with the guards would ultimately be edited out of Fortune’s Bones, a 13-minute, 16-second video that shows Fabri performing in the street along Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue as well as inside the museums, where he pierced the solemn setting. His improvised guerrilla performance was meant to confront the metaphoric “skeletons in the closet” of major cultural institutions and question the ethics of collecting artifacts from indigenous cultures.
Movement in Time, 2011 (performance).
Fabri was born and raised in Miami to Jamaican and Hungarian parents. Because of his biracial upbringing, class, economics, and politics are reflected in his work, which can be seen in four videos on display at the Museum of Art|Fort Lauderdale.
Target Customer Relations (still performance)
Fabri’s work deals with contemporary sociopolitical issues, so an exhibit of his videos adds a fresh complement to the museum’s concurrent show of photographs by civil rights pioneer Bob Adelman. Both shows will remain up through May 17.
The 37-year-old Fabri explains that “my works pulls from African-American politics, both the civil rights movement and what is going on today,” he says. “Oftentimes, I am creating conversation through political repression that has happened in the past and then being aware and conscious of how things have changed and have not changed today.”
Meaning is derived from his props and his movements within the context of a carefully chosen setting; there’s hardly any dialogue. “A lot of my work doesn’t involve too much talking,” Fabri says.
He moved to New York in 2000 and earned his MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York, after picking up a BFA in graphic design from the University of Florida. His residencies have taken him to Berlin, Brazil, Maine, and around New York City, and he additionally takes on graphic design and teaching gigs.
Red- Walk (performance).
To Fabri, performance art means he uses his body as a creative tool. He views his body as political and enjoys putting himself in various contexts.
Forget Me Not, as My Tether Is Clippedspans 14 minutes and 50 seconds. It was shot in black-and-white 16mm film and captures the artist with balloons tied to his dreadlocks. The scenes are in and around Harlem, where the artist lived for several years. One location is Marcus Garvey Park, a space devoted to the Jamaican-born activist. The video’s message metaphorically examines the intersection of memory — signified by the balloons — and history and how past beliefs shape current perspective.
Two two-minute videos are also on display, and Fortune’s Bones rounds out the set.
“A major part of this was to create a dialogue,” Fabri says. “Me doing performance on the street and inside the museum — and how that registers to the audience,” he says.
See more of the artist’s work at zacharyfabri.com.
(from New Times)
Courtesy: the artist.