SIMONE FORTI WINS 2023 GOLDEN LION FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
Organizers of the Venice Biennale have awarded the Italian American artist, choreographer, and dancer Simone Forti the 2023 Golden Lion for lifetime achievement in the field of dance. “I didn’t know what the Golden Lion was,” the eighty-seven-year-old told the New York Times, adding, “If someone has to take the role and stand there holding it, I am honored to be the one to do it for the community.”
Born in Florence, Forti with her family migrated to California. She studied under Anna Halprin in the late 1950s, contributing to early works by the choreographer. In 1961, Forti created her seminal “Dance Constructions,” a group of objects made from cheap materials that prompted actions such as climbing, leaning, or whistling. In stimulating improvisation, the works are considered to be forerunners of the Judson Dance Theater, whose members during the 1960s reshaped modern dance.
The following decade, with the assistance of artist and physicist Lloyd Cross, Forti created a series of small-scale holograms of her own body that were activated by the presence of the viewer, who spurred them into motion by circling them. The holograms are considered an exclamatory response to the institutional question of how to collect and display dance, a typically ephemeral mode.
Among the artists and composers Forti has collaborated with are Trisha Brown, Dan Graham, Robert Morris, Nam June Paik, Steve Paxton, Charlemagne Palestine, Peter Van Riper, Yoshi Wada, and La Monte Young. She has additionally published books, including 1974’s in Handbook in Motion and 2003’s Oh Tongue. Forti is currently the subject of a major survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Speaking with the Times, Alex Sloane, one of the show’s curators, described her as “an artist who works with movement in many different forms. She is always looking at how to transcribe the body in motion into different mediums.”
