I am this Body/
This Rapture

I am this body/this rapture* came about as a result of our collective’s Intimate Collaboration series.

Through this series, ASTRO invites artists to work, expand, and explore a specific theme related to their practice through close collaboration with us.

Using Maddi Fuente Ubani’s work as a starting point, we began exploring: What is memory if not a form of survival? We wanted to understand the relationship between memory and identity and how these are preserved and expressed through physical and emotional means.

One work addresses how memorialising those who have been lost or marginalised connects us to them, whil another examines how both personal and collective experiences, whether remembered or forgotten, contribute to our understanding of the self.

We consider memory as something deeply embedded in the physical form and what the body leaves behind or keeps hidden. The title of the show
*I am this body/this rapture* is a line from Latin American poet Gloria Gervitz’s “Migrations: Poem, 1976–2020”.

As Roberto Tejada writes: in the poem this line transforms the poet’s sensory experience—her orgasm—into an ontological claim, holding both sensation and conviction, reflecting
the sentient body’s awareness of itself.

Drawing from Gervitz’s poem as an archive of memory—whether her own or that of the women who came before her—and Tejada’s words, five women are presenting works that explore how bodies can house memory, both collectively and individually.

How does memory move from the inside to the outside?
How does it exist within the body and keeps the self alive?
How does it transcend from generation to generation, from the body to the space; how do we become part of
the collective fabric of memory of the world?

We claim that memory is survival, if for no other reason other than it being the only proof we were ever alive.
In essence, the works function as additional layers to Maddi’s performance, collectively addressing how memory and identity are intertwined with physical presence and emotional resonance, focusing on how we preserve and experience memories through various forms of expression, our bodies serve as living archives:
preserving and expressing memories across time.

Raisa,
September 2024

Participating Artists
at Refo Moabit
11- 12.09.24, Berlin

Maddi Fuente Ubani
Raisa Desypri
Kanella Petropoulou
Vasilia Sofro w/
Dimitra Sofroniou & AEZ Pinay
Lizzy Yarwood