Kris Lemsalu together with Kitty Florentine at Performa Biennal 2023, New York

Performa Biennial 2023 will feature a first-time collaboration between artists Kitty Florentine and Kris Lemsalu
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The performance centers on a metamorphic landscape as an agent of interrogation, pleasure, mystery, and transformation.
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Taking place at 99 Canal @99canal6fl, the artists convert the space into a series of gardens highlighting themes present in much of their practices individually.
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In the performance, the symbols of body and fountain are blurred, each becoming the other as Lemsalu transforms herself into a human-water production, troubling concepts of origin and source. Florentine brings together the staging with sound and movement that is inspired by her harp and Linnujämm Improvisation (Bird Jam Session), built on the song of a Common Snipe.
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Kris Lemsalu & Kitty Florentine
’As long as the blood beats in our fountains’
November 5th at 99 Canal Street, New York
Doors 7:30 pm | Performance 8 pm
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Uncanny and ethereal, Kitty Florentine is an Estonian artist who creates soundscapes of kaleidoscopic volume to evoke cinema, temporality, atmosphere, and alternative realms. Her most recent album was nominated at the Estonian Music Awards in 2023 for Indie/Alternative Album of the Year.
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Based between New York and Tallinn, Estonia, Kris Lemsalu is a multidisciplinary artist whose varied practice spans sculpture and performance in a continual negotiation of the line drawn between the practice of life and the practice of art. Kris Lemsalu and Kyp Malone's first joint commission was part of Performa 17’s Estonian Pavilion Without Walls. She represented Estonia in the 58th Venice Biennial in 2019.
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Organized by the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC) / Kai Art Center @kaicenter
Supported by the Baltic Culture Fund, Estonian Ministry of Culture, and Consulate General of Estonia in New York.

Curator: Karin Laansoo @laansoo
Production designer: Viktoria Martjanova
Photo: Britt Randma
Graphic design: Kaarel Nõmmik
Soundscape: Kitty Florentine