Sculpting Air: Telephone
Kledia Spiro, Sculpting Air: Telephone, 2024, featuring special guest Nathan Halbur, music by Nathan Halbur and Angela Yam, Performance, Vivid Oblivion, Cambridge, MA. Presented by Mobius Live.
In my recent performance, at Vivid Oblivion in Cambridge, I explored the intersection of collective mark-making, scent, and mixed reality. Drawing inspiration from my residency at Groton School in 2018, I selected essential oils that evoke personal memories and connections to specific students. Each scent became a catalyst for audience participation.
During the performance, participants engaged in an intimate sensory experience. I passed scents to the audience members via wrist or fingertip touch, inviting them to interpret the aromas through drawings in air. These drawings were projected live, creating an evolving visualization of collective marks that everyone could witness in real-time.
For those who opted in, VR goggles offered an immersive experience, allowing participants to step into and interact with the shared sculpture we were co-creating. An opera singer, Nathan Halbur, added another layer of interpretation, responding in real-time to the visual marks and creating a meditative, almost sacred atmosphere as the scents permeated the room. His live performance was complemented by pre-recorded compositions by Angela Yam. Ten poets were invited to interpret the smells before the music compositions were created, infusing their unique perspectives into the piece. The poetry was contributed by: Jennifer Huang (juniper berry), Sydney Jin Choi (elemi), Jamie Danner (vetiveria), Regina Stroncek (petitgrain), Sarah-Luna Luke (ajedrea), Ayla J. Goktan (neroli), Uma Prasad (rose), Vidita Kanniks (sweet orange), Yolanda He Yang (thyme), and Indë (ginger orange).
The performance concluded with a communal ritual: audience members passed a scent down their neighborhood of seats, blending connection and ephemeral interaction. This act transformed the audience into performers and creators, weaving their individual and collective experiences into the artwork.
The marks created during the event are being translated into animations and are planned for future 3D sculptures, with the ultimate goal of creating a series of audience-driven artworks across different locations. Each iteration will capture the unique essence of its participants while highlighting our shared humanity through scent, touch, and mark making.
Photos: Jasper He
Kledia Spiro, It is already written, 2024, featuring special guest Linda Spiro, performance, Eustis Estate Museum, Milton, MA
Utilizing the beautiful Eustis Estate Museum, my mother and I welcomed guests and invited them to partake in a traditional Albanian practice: reading coffee cups.
Guests enjoyed freshly brewed Turkish coffee prepared by my mother at the estate. We then guided them through the ritual of reading the coffee grounds left in their cups. This tradition involved swirling the grounds with a bit of coffee residue to create a mud-like texture, flipping the cup upside down, and allowing the grounds to settle and form intricate patterns. After waiting 5–10 minutes, my mother revealed the symbols that emerged, offering insights into the guests’ futures.
This performance marked the debut of our live mother-daughter collaboration, blending cultural heritage with social practice. We aimed to create a space for connection, reflection, and community, intertwining the intimate nature of this tradition with the historic ambiance of the Eustis Estate. Guests were encouraged to select a cup from the sets we provided, which were brought over from Albania and passed down to my mother by her own mother. We also brought a special coffee pot, known as a xhezve, from Albania, along with a saucer for sugar.
Through this performance, we shared a cherished cultural practice while fostering meaningful moments of engagement and connection.
Photos: Joanna Tam
Accumulation + Migration, 2024, Performance and Mixed Media, Eustis Estate Museum, Milton, MA
Mobius presents a series of unique performances that delve into this compelling theme, inviting the audience to reflect on the profound impacts of climate change on both humanity and the natural world. Performers will engage in building a sculpture while simultaneously creating dynamic traveling movements, seamlessly blending art and action to evoke a powerful narrative.
The event featured a special performance by Kledia Spiro and her mother Linda Spiro, It is already written that included audience members.
It also included two musical sets bookending the performances with evocative soundscapes that complement the visual and movement pieces, enhancing the sensory journey through the Eustis Estate and its landscape.
This event offered a fresh perspectives on the historic grounds.
Artists: Jimena Bermejo, Serena Garbriels, Forbes Graham, Jeff Huckleberry, Sandy Huckleberry, Sara June, Kledia Spiro, Margaret Bellafiore
Music: Forbes Graham, Bonnie Jones, Chris Brokaw and Greg Kelly
Photos by: Joanna Tam
Kledia Spiro, Press and Sniff, 2024, 5' x 2" PVC pipe, Metaquest 3 VR controller, wood, momentary switch, 5V fan, cheesecloth, essential oil, 3.5" x 5.5” laser etched acrylic drawings, Perseus Gallery, New York, NY. Curated by Clio Art Fair.
In this interactive installation, participants explored 11 distinct aromas through my press and sniff boxes. The PVC pipe was equipped with a VR controller to capture collective air drawings in real time, translating each scent into visual form. There were also 12 laser etched acrylic drawings of bar path analysis of past participants in my past performances. Sound played a pivotal role, beginning with an underwater barbell sound. Each aroma had a unique sound signature, chosen by chatgpt and edited by Darren Alexander Cole. Each participant was asked to smell one of the boxes on the wall and then draw what they thoughts that smell looked like. Hyperallergic highlighted: “Patrons and artists danced with the pipe after smelling an installation on the wall, attracting a rowdy crowd inside the quaint first-floor space.”
Video documentation: Darren Alexander Cole
Kledia Spiro, Leaves Some Kind of Residue, solo performance “Të Dua aq Shumë: I love you so much,” 2024, Vivid Oblivion, Cambridge, MA. Curated by Nife (Jennifer) Lucey-Brzoza.
I presented excerpts from my dad’s own poetry notebooks through my performance. My ultimate goal is to translate all of his work, including his dissertation, starting with this performance. Collaborating with my mom, I designed an outfit: a silver bodysuit with a skirt made of zippers. I performed while the audience is hearing my mom’s translation of my dad’s poetry. She is translating in English, while you hear his voice reading the work in Albania. I remixed these on vinyl using Serato.
To give and receive.
Te dua aq shumë.
Participants extracted words from my outfit to collectively create new poetry within this new communal body. I invited members of the audience to trace my body and each other’s bodies on top of mine. After the performance, Spiro plans to send everyone the collaborative piece they co-created.
Boston Art Review: “Kledia Spiro painstakingly walked on all fours for her piece Te dua aq shumë: I love you so much, ripping excerpts of her father’s love poems off of a hand-fashioned belt and handing them to the audience. In the cramped room, audience members had to scoot forward and backward to make way for Spiro. She then called upon everyone to read their lines aloud, first one at a time and then all together. The result was a jumble of utterances, a verbal exquisite corpse, voices timid and bold and everything in between. Deeply collaborative and playful, it felt like a conversation with a good friend, a religious ritual, a rite of passage all at once.
Audience Member: “Experiencing a fragment of the poetry and having the chance to speak it aloud was a profound moment. As participants in you art performance, we were not just observers but a component of the work. By collectively reciting words spoken by Kledia's Mom and Dad, we shared something deeply personal and rare. It's uncommon to voice the words of someone else's parents, and in doing so, we connected to the performance on a unique level. These parts how ever large or small, their impact, we can take with us as well.” - Buford Design
"a dance between viewer and painting" - Boston Globe, read full article here.
Kledia Spiro, Drawing in Air, 2023, gloss enamel on wood, ultrasonic speakers and sensors, wood, momentary switch, 5V fan, cheesecloth, essential oil.
In her solo exhibition, artist Kledia Spiro delves into the fascinating interplay of weight, legacy, and the human experience. Over the last decade, Spiro has embarked on a quest to understand the meaning of "weight" in people's lives.
In 2018, Spiro set out on a unique journey to explore the concept of weight with middle school students from the prestigious Groton School. During her Mudge Fellowship, Artist-in-Residence at the school, she integrated Olympic weightlifting into their curriculum, teaching them complex athletic movements that extended beyond the gym into their English, Physics, art, and biology classes. Spiro recorded their lifts and transformed the data into signature light drawings, capturing a unique essence of each student's journey.
Spiro has collaborated with two diverse musicians, Lianna Sylvan and Kevin Baldwin, to translate her unique light drawings into a captivating music composition. In her upcoming exhibition, she will physically paint these signature light drawings in mid-air. Using sensors placed throughout the exhibition, each drawing triggers a unique sound experience for the visitor. When a visitor interacts with a drawing, they will hear the music created from that student's unique bar path, offering a multi sensory exploration of weight.
In 2023, Spiro extended her project to students from Boston Public School's Bridge to Calculus program. Their perspectives on weight, shaped by underprivileged backgrounds, provide a compelling contrast to the Groton students' experiences.
Spiro's project blurs the lines between information design and art, using drawings to create data for music production. The exhibition will also feature a live performance where Kevin Baldwin translates Spiro's movements into real-time sound, providing an immersive experience for the audience. Attendees will even have the chance to learn Olympic lifts, creating their own unique drawings in air and sound pieces as part of the performance.
Kledia Spiro's Drawing in Air promises to be an unforgettable exploration of weight, legacy, and the profound connections between art and human experience. Don't miss this one-of-a-kind exhibition.
The weight we carry - Cate McQuaid
Photos: Alonso Nichols
Evaporate - International Live Art Festival at Boston’s Waterworks Museum
Kledia Spiro, Let me serve you, performance, 2023, Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, Boston, MA
The weight of water even if it’s just a sip because we take clean water for granted. There was a time I had to carry gallons of water up four flights of stairs when I was five years old. The weightlifting belt is a reminder for me to brace every time and I’m blind folded at one pint to show the unpredictability of having such a privilege that is served to us.
As an extension of the exhibition, Reservoir: What the Water Knows, curated by Arlinda Shtuni, Boston’s Mobius Artist Group presents Evaporate, a weekend’s worth of live art programming over the first weekend of November.
Evaporate takes advantage of the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum’s unique setting and the special sensitivity of artists who work in ephemeral ways, and whose practices are deeply informed by watery surroundings, featuring artists from Performance Art Bergen in Norway and from Boston’s own Mobius Artist Group.
Organized by Mobius member Heather Kapplow and PAB member Anette Friedrich Johannessen, Evaporate consists of two days of performances that will activate the museums’ exhibition halls, grounds, and the nearby reservoir, flowing through these spaces in a quick rush, as the city’s water once flowed through them, and then dissipating just as quickly.
Participating artists include: Anette Friedrich Johannessen, Bjørn Venø, El Putnam, Forbes Graham, Jan-Egil Finne, Jeff Huckleberry, Jimena Bermejo, Joanna Tam, Heather Kapplow, Kurt Johannessen, Kledia Spiro, Lani Asuncion, Marcel Marcel, Margaret Bellafiore, Marilyn Arsem, Max Lord, Nayara Leite, Nife Brzoza, Pavana Reid, Philip Fryer, Sandy Huckleberry, Sara June, Serena Gabriels, Tom Mackie.
Boston Globe
The Life Aquatic
Watch art flow at the Evaporate Live Art Festival. The two-day, water-themed event, featuring choreographed and improvisational performance art, explores the Waterworks Museum space, the nearby reservoir, and the movement of water. The festival highlights artists from Boston's Mobius Artists Group and Performance Art Bergen, based in Norway. Daytime tickets are free and evening tickets are $15 at the door. mobius.org
"The birth of a goddess
It was itchy dusty and dull.
Spiderwebs
Smell of wet old moldy Haves wood
Strength
Steal Rubber smears my feet.
Black
Scrunching my skin.
Red
Breathing and sniffling was hard to do.
Air
I reached slowly for the rim.
a fresh breeze of freedom.
Red black and air”
Elli Rome
Boston Globe I Karen Campbell
OOZING Multimedia Artist Kledia Spiro's most recent body of work, on display at Boston Sculptors Gallery through Oct. 1 as part of Donna Dodson's "SHEROES" exhibit, is a series of video performances she calls "Oozing." It examines the weighty responsibility of family legacy and inheritance. On Sept. 1, she presents a live performance, "In the Heels Of," which showcases how we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us.
Photos: Luis Brens
Kledia Spiro, Oozing, 2023, part of Donna Dodson’s Sheroes exhibition, Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, MA
August 30 – October 1, 2023
In the Heels Of performance SEPTEMBER 1, 6PM, Boston Sculptors Gallery (486 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02118)
Artist’s Reception: Saturday, September 9, 3 – 5pm, with artist talks at 4pm
Roundtable Discussion Heroine Herstories and Contemporary Visions: Sunday, September 10 at 2pm With Donna Dodson, Maya Rubio and Kledia Spiro. Co-moderated by Dr. Clareese Hill and Dr. Ali Terndrup. Join us for this virtual event on Zoom
Documentation: Darren Alexander Cole
Can you ever uphold your family's legacy? How? What if your family members had important jobs and were looked up to? What if your grandfather wrote and published four books, starting at the age of 85 - 95years old? What if your dad was the head of education for the whole country? What if his work and writing went against public policy and the political regime of the time? Can you ever uphold such a legacy? Can you ever uphold such a legacy and be a woman? I forgot to mention that my incredible grandfather's and dad's work would not have been possible without their partner's labor. My grandmother went to college after she had three kids, in the 50's. My mom typed my dad's entire dissertation on a manual typewriter, after coming home from working third shift as a translator for the National Telegraphic Agency and taking care of my sister and me. These often-unseen heroes, make it possible for us to see the other heroes like my grandfather and my dad. My grandmother and my mom not only made it possible for me to uphold my family's legacy, but they made it possible for me to create my own legacy, piece by piece. They inspired me to mark and make my own territory, as heavy as it might be at times, allowing for a new beginning, a new reality, a new process to reveal itself. I am lifting on top of my family's words, their words, their hardships, their successes. My family's legacy holds me up. Their words are my ground, they are carrying me, grounding me, so that I can continue doing the work. I will keep oozing and leaving traces.
“In Spiro’s most recent body of work, she considers the inheritance and upholding of her family’s legacy—one with significant achievements—as a weighty responsibility. Being a woman adds another layer of complexity, considering the historical challenges of prescribed gender roles. Yet, the support and contributions of unseen heroes, like Spiro’s mother and grandmother, play a crucial role in making such legacies possible. Her family's legacy in Albania, rooted in the remarkable work of her grandfather and father, became her foundation.
Supported by the efforts of her mother and grandmother, who defied societal norms, Spiro is empowered to leave her own mark, creating a new reality, and continuing their journey. In her performance Oozing, she stands on the shoulders of these unseen heroes, carrying forward their aspirations and breaking barriers. Their labor and sacrifices enable her to build her own legacy, step by step. She embraces the weight, leaving traces of progress as she goes, constantly evolving and opening up new possibilities for the future.“
Kledia Spiro, Which Way, 2022, Kingston Gallery and Somerville Museum, Boston, MA
In Which Way, I tackle the need to "mark my territory" to survive in a changing landscape as both an immigrant and a woman. For immigrants, home is a constantly changing territory. The video performance and installation depict me crawling through sand with stilettos and a weightlifting belt, trying to make it to an undetermined side. I want to confront my viewers with a new path - one that might be more difficult to walk but by the end of it they will gain a new perspective and appreciation. I acknowledge that all the while, "walking" that path is a privilege, in and of itself.
Kingston Gallery Press Release: “Spiro's work examines how personal lived experience can open a lens on the global immigrant experience, and how to make that experience more accessible. Her voice is an important window into a reality that, in a world struggling with the climate crisis and war, more people will experience globally in the decades to come. Like past immigrants, we are moving into an undetermined and uncertain future with little control over the outcome.”
Documentation: Darren Alexander Cole
Sand Installation and Fabrication: Liam Corley
Kledia Spiro, She’s a beast, featuring Janelle Gilchrist Dance Troupe and original music by Lianna Hauoli, 2021, Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, MA.
What does it mean to be a superhero? What does it mean to be a superhero, in today’s world, in 2021?
Can women be their own superhero? Can we unchain from society’s expectations and pave our path? I believe we can and I believe we always have. Even though we have been conditioned to “smile” and apologize incessantly and unwarrantedly, there is a strength that women possess that is unlike any superhero we have witnessed in the movies. Our bodies, our intuition, our heightened sense of awareness is a superpower.
Can women really be superheroes?
Hint: They already are. And, they always have been.
Lighting design: Liam Corley
Photography: Paul T Sullivan
Kledia Spiro, I should have stuck to ballet, featuring Janelle Gilchrist Dance Troupe and original music by Lianna Hauoli, 2021, Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, MA.
Lighting design: Liam Corley, Photography: Paul T Sullivan
I SHOULD HAVE STUCK TO BALLET Part of Donna Dodson’s “Amazons Among Us” installation honoring strong women at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, Kledia Spiro and Janelle Gilchrist Dance Troupe present this in-person multimedia performance, which takes its inspiration from Xena, the Warrior Princess. - KAREN CAMPBELL
What does it mean to be a superhero? What does it mean to be a superhero, in today’s world, in 2021?
“Where are all the girl superhero stuff?” That’s a question that Christopher Bell brought to his TED talk in 2016. That question stays with me every day. It made its way to my performance Tight. in 2019 and now it has permeated my work for Amazons Among Us. Can women be their own superhero? Can we unchain from society’s expectations and pave our path? I believe we can and I believe we always have. Even though we have been conditioned to “smile” and apologize incessantly and unwarrantedly, there is a strength that women possess that is unlike any superhero we have witnessed in the movies. Our bodies, our intuition, our heightened sense of awareness is a superpower.
We are expected to do it all, and that’s because we can, but at what cost? How do we hold on to our superpowers, without losing ourselves? My answer is through my artwork, my performances, my everyday actions, and the conversations that I engage with. What is your answer?
Can women really be superheroes?
Hint: They already are. And, they always have been.
Exhibitions
Kledia Spiro: Too (un)Familiar?, Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA March 31 - May 2, 2021
The Boston Globe: “KLEDIA SPIRO: TOO (UN)FAMILIAR? Like many this last year, Spiro, a multimedia artist and weightlifter born in Albania, contemplated what home means. She rooted herself in the landscape of the Wachusett Reservoir, reflecting on the constancy of nature and the changes of an immigrant’s life. In photos and a video here, she ties the themes together, attempting to literally do what many children of immigrants do figuratively: Lift her parents up. Through May 2. Kingston Gallery. 450 Harrison Ave. 617-423-4113, www.kingstongallery.com” CATE McQUAID
Press + Media
Goslow, Brian. "Capsule Previews: March/April 2021." Artscope, February 26, 2021.
McQuaid, Cate. "What's happening in the arts world." The Boston Globe, The Ticket, April 22, 2021.
Response to “Too (un)Familiar?”, Review by Marie Anthony
Home, for me, has never actually been a physical place. Home for me is where my family is. Home is a feeling. Home is where I feel free and anchored and supported and loved, all the things that the reservoir provided. So, during the pandemic, I continued training to lift my parents, yet this time, I knew I wasn't going to do it alone. The paradoxically fragile nature of strength and the changing landscape of our home shifting yet again meant a new found freedom. The pandemic doubled up our strength and resiliency. We now had our family support system and the "natural" support system. We were in a symbiotic relationship where we were bringing our cultural fragments to a new landscape, while the new landscape was generating its own fragments with its new inhabitants.
Lady Liber-ate, 2020, Tiny & Short: Micro Performances, Starlight Square Amphitheater, Cambridge, MA. Curated by Jimena Bermejo, produced by The Dance Complex.
"Lady Liber-ate" questions women’s role in society. Can women balance the health of their families, jobs, personal lives, societal expectations and their communities?
What does it mean to balance a barbell on your back? Can it be liberated of all its weight, all of it's expectations, from carrying real exotic fruit, to carrying fake fruit, to carrying stilettos, to carrying masks?
The performance paid ode to Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She spent her life protecting women's rights and advancing justice for those disenfranchised by the political establishment.
RBG helped pass these five laws to achieve gender equality:
* Employers cannot discriminate against employees based on gender or reproductive choices.
* Women are allowed to open bank accounts, credit cards, and receive a mortgage without a male co-signer.
* State-funded schools must admit women.
* Juries must include women.
* Men are entitled to the same caregiving and Social Security rights as women.
There was a male voiceover asking me inappropriate (now illegal) questions and making the following statements:
* You want to have a bank account? Do you have a male cosigner with you?
* Make sure you dress really nice for your boss.
* Where are you from? Because you have a really exotic appeal that the president will like.
* Do you have children or planning on having some, because you know that is a problem?
* You want a mortgage? Do you have your husband with you?
Kledia Spiro, Tight., 2019, Grace Exhibition Space, NY, NY
A performance about shedding labels, masculinity and gender equality.
“For every man
who ruins my relationship to art,
there is a woman
rebuilding it again
cracked, lifted cinder block
by Olympic Weightlifting cinder block”
Poem by Vanessa Sun
Photo credit: Brad Farwell
We need to talk!, 2018, Satellite Art Show, Miami, FL. Curated by Quinn Dukes
Satellite Art Show | Ice Palace Lot, 18 NW 14th Street, Miami, FL 33136 | Performance Is Alive performance space
Performance Is Alive partnered once again with Satellite Art Show to present Miami’s only non-stop performance art program during Miami Art Week. Alive At Satellite featured live and video based performance art projects from over 20artists across the globe. The 4-day performance program celebrated SATELLITE’s mission to honor the significant impact of performance art - an often underrepresented medium during contemporary art fairs.
Miami Art Week participants were invited to drink coffee off of my back and discuss five topics: Politics, Religion, Money, Sex, Gender.
Who is drinking off your back? Are we working together? Are we adding more weight or are we lifting each other up through unspoken encouragement? How do we function in society?
Photos by Alexandra Sullivan, courtesy of Performance Is Alive.
Miami Satellite Press Mentions
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Art Basel in Miami Beach diary: performing beauty at Satellite, cosmic creations at Untitled and making sweet art world music
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Ask the Collector with Holly Hager Collecting 101-Performance Art
Ecto, Meso, Endo, 2018, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA
Artists Hector Canonge, Kledia Spiro and Óscar Gavilán Ortiz explore The Weight of Inheritance through performance art in the Mills Gallery. Simply put, inheritance refers to monetary or physical property that is passed from one generation to the next, as well as to the physical attributes and genetic qualities received from one’s parents. Yet perceptions of gender, class, race, and ethnicity make our heritage a variable gift or burden, or both, depending on the context. With an emphasis on process, these artists will collectively and individually consider how the body, movement and objects carry the "weight of inheritance." The centrality of the body in performance art makes it a key form and creative instrument with which to critically engage this concept as it fits within cultural and economic structures (e.g., art history, history, capitalism, politics). Each artist’s diverse practice and formative perspectives will enhance the address of “inheritance” and its “weight.”
The program was organized by Lisa Crossman, in collaboration with Hector Canonge, director of the monthly program LiVEART.US hosted at the Queens Museum in New York City, where The Weight of Inheritance was performed on October 21, 2018.
The Weight of Inheritance, 2018, Queens Museum, Queens, NY
“So Great to support one of my friends from Tufts and one of my favorite contemporary performance artist, Kledia Spiro. With the Kavanaugh inquisition playing in the background, one’s feelings are elevated by seeing the physical weight of a heavy punching bag adorned with lace intimate garments suppressing the female body. The juxtaposition of the inquiry into Kavanaugh’s sordid past and the female body under this weight evokes emotions of slights in the acknowledgement of women’s rights and civil liberties on a whole. As if that wasn’t enough, Kledia’s face is partially concealed by a fish net with eyes covered by flowery jewel pins pointing to the fact of unrecognized societal norms that rob women of a truly respected and acknowledged identity. Spiro’s provocative black night attire even seems to suggest a leap of thinking that many men have with attraction. The chains that usually hold the bag up is adorned with pearls which signifies gender norms of the male gaze. Kledia ends the performance with taking the pearl adorned chain and smashing it against the cement floor leaving the delicate image of pearls in pieces and scattered. In conclusion, Kledia Spiro further smashes the delicate pearls with her stilettos as they are dispersed across the space as a way to claim her voice for herself and the many others that are like her.
If you are a feminist and you have a chance to see Kledia Spiro perform don’t walk but run to the performance. You too will say, “brava”, having witnessed something speciaL...” - Jason Wallace, artist
Photo credit: Jason Wallace
Battle of the Beasts, Revisited, 2018, featuring special guests Roger Y. Dunn and Oscar A. Reyes Bogran, Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, MA
Spiro is a performance and video artist and Olympic Weightlifter. She uses strength and weightlifting as a symbol of survival, empowerment and celebration. Weightlifting becomes a vehicle for discussing women’s role in society. Her videos, photos and installations are on view in the Match of the Matriarchs exhibition.
The original Battle of the Beasts featured Jennifer Shade playing a chess game against Vanessa Sun. Spiro also invited two male athletes to lift the life-size chess pieces during the chess game. “In the wings, off the game-board, a woman lifts a weight, ignored, unthanked, the clanging of her barbell echoing in the void. She toils away, watching the men move the pieces, until she decides to drop her weight and march into the thick of the game. A tussle. One of the men, she shoves away, breaks his grip on his piece, and knocks him down. Now it’s her piece. She moves it alone.” - Silas Jackson (special guest)
In Battle of the Beasts, Revisited, there will be two male chess players and Spiro will be alone with no loaders. Will she be able to lift all the chess pieces alone? Can she do it all? Is she expected to? Does she have to do it with a smile?
Battle of the Beasts, 2018, featuring special guests Jennifer Shahade, Vanessa Sun, Silas Jackson and Christopher Louis, Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, MA
“Kledia conceptualized the Battle of the Beasts performance where she featured Jennifer Shahade and Vanessa Sun playing a chess match. She also invited two male athletes in corporate attire to be the loaders of the match until she decided to push one away and even the playing field. The themes of feminism, empowerment, backlash, mythology, family, and community took shape as we created new work for the show.“ - Donna Dodson, artist
“Two men stand facing each other on a pristine chessboard, the captains of the arrayed pieces, staring each other down across the glaringly bright space—decked out like office workers, each one taking himself more seriously than the other, dueling self-importances like two mirrors facing each other so that the reflections upon reflections have no real endpoint.
They start to move the vanguard pieces, laboriously lugging the heavy pawns across the checkered board, moving among the pieces like tree trunks in a dense forest. No bird’s-eye view of the game for them—they’re in the thick of the battlefield, panting, more disheveled by the move, their shirts and ties littering the tiles like leaves in autumn, but they continue. (Wait—aren’t there women’s voices here, and aren’t the strategies informed by the mental labor of women calling out from somewhere? Ah, who cares? Certainly not these men. Ask them afterwards, especially whoever wins, and he’ll gladly tell you he alone moved those heavy pieces across the board.)
In the wings, off the game-board, a woman lifts a weight, ignored, unthanked, the clanging of her barbell echoing in the void. She toils away, watching the men move the pieces, until she decides to drop her weight and march into the thick of the game. A tussle. One of the men, she shoves away, breaks his grip on his piece, and knocks him down. Now it’s her piece. She moves it alone.
The game continues, while she continues to work—not unseen on the wings anymore, now moving her pieces, until the man calls her from across the board. Going to him, she assists, unthanked, moving a piece too big for one to move alone. She’s tired (between her every move she returns to her anonymous toil off the board,) but helps anyway: not because she’ll be thanked or acknowledged (she won’t,) but because otherwise that piece wouldn’t move. The man knows it, and she knows it. But the fiction still lives, for now. The man still sounds angry at her for needing her help.
And the pawns keep moving. The rooks keep moving. The strategies continue to unfold. Until it’s time for the Queen to break ranks and move onto the field. The man wants to unleash his most powerful piece. And it’s a big piece—too big to move alone. The man angrily calls for help—expecting it now, entitled to it.
But the woman ignores him. He calls again, struggling with the heavy piece, lost somewhere in the thick forest of pieces, across the wilderness of black-and-white. And she continues to ignore him. Finally, he’s quiet, lost somewhere in that wilderness. The game is over—it ended the moment she decided not to keep the pieces moving. The strategies fell apart. The game collapsed when her help couldn’t be taken for granted.
Because the machinations of society are impossible without the contributions of women, and the more women are empowered to act and contribute, the more is possible.” - Silas Jackson, special guest and author
Learning how to Draw, 2018, 2 channel video, Christopher Brodigan Gallery, Groton School, Groton, MA.
Learning How to Draw is an ongoing project, first created during my 2017/2018 residency at the Groton School where students from all departments learned how to Olympic lift during their scheduled classes. Their movements with the barbell were tracked by a bar path analysis app used in Olympic lifting to determine how straight the trajectory of the bar is.
I re-contextualized this tool by continuously tracking the students movements which would create drawings in space, capturing their successes, failures, and journeys. Their bar path analysis were vastly different than that of professional weightlifters and their process of learning was beautiful and messy. The resulting piece was called Learning How to Draw.
A multimedia Solo Exhibition by Kledia Spiro, 2017 Mudge Fellow. Featuring video, sound art, performance and sculpture.
Made Masculine: Ready to be Remade featuring THE WEIGHT: Playboys and Vogue, 2017, Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire
"Spiro walked around the museum holding the purses high above her head. Her heels clicked against the floors as each step the audience grew more tense, hoping she would be able to withstand the weight placed on her" - Nick D'Aloia, The New Hampshire, staff writer.
"By performing on a runway composed of alluring magazines, the likes of Vogue and Playboy, tension is drawn between the societal standards for both men and women. With this layout, masculinity may be referenced by both the magazines, composed of erotic images which may beguile men, and the act of weightlifting, which requires a particular physical prowess. Femininity, on the other hand, is depicted solely through the magazines, where women are modeled and posed as if they are delicate dolls in an attempt to personify beauty itself. " - Sebastian Mandino, Museum of Art, Fellow.
"Kledia Spiro’s parents are willing and wedded co-performers in her 2-channel video Trousseau. The channels emphasize the endurance and repetition of training, as well as isolate each parent in a separate frame. Her parents only come together through Spiro’s attempt to lift them. Her performance offers an image of strength and athleticism that challenges assumptions of these characteristics as male, and binds them to heritage." - Curator, Lisa Crossman, P.h.D.
Conservative and Bland, 2017, Le Petit Versailles, NY, NY
Part of the Archive 2 - performance series organized by Karl Cooney.
This series is a small contribution to the historical record of performance art in New York City.
Le Petit Versailles events are made possible by Allied Productions, Inc., Gardeners & Friends of LPV, GreenThumb/NYC Dept. of Parks, Materials for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, and the Office of City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez. LPV Exhibitions are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
For more information visit: Karl Cooney
PAPERWEIGHT: Artforum, ARTnews Magazine, Art in America, Christie's, Sotheby's ..., 2017, Rockwall Studios, NY
Organized by WILD TØR∇S and WILD EmbeddingS at Rockwall Studios.
Video stills: Azumi Oe
We are Together, We are Art, featuring Kledia Spiro, 2017, solo performance and installation, The Washing Machine ISN'T Good Enough, Java Studios, Brooklyn, NY
Clothes. They are an important part of people's perceptions of who we are as individuals, and particularly what their roles in society may be.
Brand names for clothing, shoes and accessories are a significant part of our daily choices. Not just because of their superior quality but because of their NAME and their PRICE TAG. Brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Versace, Fendi, Armani, Tommy Hilfiger and more are recognized everywhere, for their style, but most importantly for being expensive.
Affording these clothes is one thing but washing them is a whole other hurdle. Now you may think that most people who can afford these clothes from these brand names can of course also afford cleaning them appropriately, which usually involves a dry cleaner or at the very least a washing machine and a dryer. However, that is not always the case. In many countries, especially socio-economically disadvantaged countries, people will save up their monthly pay check to purchase just a single article of clothing. Yet, they do not have the proper means of washing them and they often even lack reliable access to water. In fact, many people from low SES countries think it's better to hand-wash all of the clothes so as not to ruin the precious clothing material. Women in particular will spend many hours hunched over of a bathtub or a sink washing these clothes. Often, these women have to go out, to find additional water, only to carry buckets of water up and down the stairs to make sure that their families' Polo shirts are washed just right.
Growing up, I saw this in my own country and my own family. Yet, what has surprised me the most is the need to continue hand-washing clothes even in the US, where resources are plentiful. Is the washing machine Just Not Good Enough for these precious brands?
THE WEIGHT and solo performance exhibition Lifting Lives, II: BRING YOUR PROTEST SIGNS, Sprinkler Factory, Worcester, MA
Lifting Lives, II: BRING YOUR PROTEST SIGNS was centered around lifting the lives of all the people that are affected by the current political climate. Everyone attending the performance was asked to bring a protest sign. The sign came from either a protest that they have participated in or in reaction to Trump's recent executive actions. There were also protest sigs available for the audience to pick up at the Sprinkler Factory Art Gallery. Two people from the audience loaded the weight of the protest signs to my custom welded barbell. Ultimately, the gesture of lifting weight over your head has a universal connotation of standing up for what you believe in. The form of protesting with signs over your head has an incredible amount of weight and is critical to our current times.
My installation THE WEIGHT serves as a performative sculpture and was on display at the Second Floor Sculpture Park at the Sprinkler Factory.
To visit the Lifting Lives II campaign, visit: http://eepurl.com/czBL_r
Photo credit: Mike Hendrickson
Lifting Lives, 2016, featuring John Vo and Tommy Vo, Nine Dot Gallery, Worcester, MA
Lifting Lives is a series of performances structured around lifting the “lives” of Spiro’s loaders. The loaders in Olympic Weightlifting are usually two people, one at each end of the barbell, adding weight to the barbell and making sure it’s perfectly calibrated. Spiro will feature three distinctly unique sets of loaders in each of the performances.
The first Lifting Lives series features John Vo and Tommy Vo. The Vo brothers are both artists. John is a painter and president of Nine Dot Gallery. Tommy Vo is a photographer and exhibitions manager of Nine Dot Gallery. Spiro will be lifting the lives of these two artists. They will be Spiro’s loaders. They will be loading her barbell with a collection of things that are important to their respective lives. Additionally, they will be loading the barbell to the cadence of a poem that her father wrote. The poem is a reflection on Spiro’s year long performances of lifting her parents books from Albania, Italy, France, Russia, and America. The Lifting Lives series are organized by Kledia Spiro, John Vo and Tommy Vo.
To visit the Lifting Lives Campaign: http://eepurl.com/crNByT
Video by OMC, Chris DeLeigh, Tommy Vo
Protektim Plastik, 2016
LiVEART.US hosted at Queens Museum, NY
Organized: Hector Canonge
Video credit: Karl Cooney
Protektim Plastik is about a law that was passed by the director of the ministry of education, Dion Spiro, when the arms depot in Albania were broken into, causing a deathly civil war. Mr. Spiro (my father), ordered all the schools to require students to carry their books in plastic bags, in order to easily detect bombs, grenades, or other weapons. Plastic can be radically strong and yet very fragile and transparent. An audio interview with Mr. Spiro, describing his policy and the situation was played in a loop, during the performance.
For this performance, each plastic bag held a book from my parents library collection, accumulated from Albania and their years of living in the United States. I kept filling the plastic bags with books and adding them to the barbell. I performed the olympic lifts with the plastic bags filled with books, until the bags start tearing and the books start falling off. The piece is about trying to “lift” history and confronting my Albanian childhood, inheritance and cultural expectations.
Click here to visit Kledia Spiro, Featured Artist, LiVEART.US hosted at the Queens Museum campaign
COffee Conversations, 2016, Panoply Performance Lab, NY, NY, Curated by Cris Schayer
For more information, visit the FLASHBULB Page
Trousseau II, 2016, Thomas Young Gallery, Boston, MA
Photo credit: Tommy Vo
While I Breathe, I Hope, 2015, Kledia Spiro and Ryan C. McMahon, Piano Craft Gallery, Boston, MA
This work is about occupying spaces of uncertainty and finding grace in both the weight and the weightlessness of being in such a state. It's about the obstacles we create for ourselves; and the processes in which we fail, succeed, and coast through life and the discovery of humor within this process. It can be as absurd as trying to lift, breathe, dive, repeat, lift, breathe, dive, repeat…"Dum spiro spero means While I breathe, I hope in Latin and is a modern paraphrase of ideas that survive in two ancient writers, Theocritus and Cicero. It is a motto of various places, families, and organizations."
This video documentation captures performance artist Kledia Spiro carrying the weight of her performance. She traveled with a barbell from Worcester, Massachusetts and carried the barbell through Brooklyn to Manhattan and back to Brooklyn where she then performed the "Lifting the Sweetness" at Grace Exhibition Space. Videographer: Esther Zabronsky, Editor: Karl Cooney.
Lifting the Sweetness, 2015, Grace Exhibition Space and Gallery, NY, NY
"In a feat of ritualistic calisthenics that investigated survival and female empowerment, Kledia Spiro convinced us that there is a very clear, totemic connection between weightlifting melons, folk dance, and Freudian and Piagetian behavioral concepts." - Hyperallergic Magazine
Text by Grace-Yvette Gemmell
Illustrations by Erica Cassill
The Sphinx Returns at Grace Exhibition Space & Gallery in New York City was a 4-month performance series curated by Whitney V. Hunter. "The Sphinx Returns is a curated series of performance art and contemporary performance which looks at the artist as the myth maker and performance art as the mythology of our time setting the course for a history of the future." - Whitney V. Hunter
Photo credit: © 2015 Miao Jiaxin
http://hyperallergic.com/255695/sketches-from-a-carnivalesque-weekend-of-brooklyn-performance-art/
The Ground as People, 2015, Great American Performance Art Festival, Rosekill Farm, Rosendale, NY
Two barbells were made for this performance and installation. One barbell was a tree trunk that carried buckets on each side. The buckets were reminiscent and symbolic of lifting heavy containers of clean drinking water for long distances in countries that no longer have the luxury of providing their citizens with enough water. As a child in Albania, I remember carrying huge bottles of water, up four flights of stairs so we could have enough for the week. Yet, instead of water, the buckets carried rocks. They carried, and I carried the weight of the land. I could not measure the weight of the rocks. I was carrying an unknown weight, a weight that can only be lifted on the ground.
Ian Deleón's performance ended and intertwined with mine. He pulled an empty boat through the meadows by his neck. He had nothing on his back but a rope that dragged the boat. He waited in the water with the boat until I was no longer physically able to lift the "barbell" and the rocks/land it carried.
I jumped in the water. Another woman, Ivy Castellanos, got in the empty boat. Ian and I, pulled and swam the boat out in the middle of the lake. There was a floating platform in the water, waiting there with a different barbell. This barbell was made of a metal beam and tractor tires. I got on the platform, as did Ivy Castellanos. I tried to lift the weight over my head, time and time again. I could not do it.
When I was lifting on land, I realized the ground had given me an unexpected power and resistance. The water, on the other hand, did not give any strength back. Not only did I have to balance on top of the platform on water, but I had to push off of the water. I kept hearing everyone's encouragement from the shore. They were waiting there with canteens and torches, for me to complete an impossible task. It was as if they were part of a ceremony. Yet, they were giving me a vigil, for the land I had left behind.
From the platform, the people looked like a bed of unweathered fireflies. The barbell and it's bumper plates became a reference to floating devices for survival. The two surviving bodies on the platform, in the middle of the water, at night, could only survive with the other persons presence. The strength and resistance once provided by the ground was now provided from the people.
There was an unexpected failure from the inability to be "grounded". The success or failure of lifting the weight overhead was dependent on another person. It reminded me of the refugees I had witnessed leaving Albania in a little boat at night and waiting in the middle of the ocean until another boat got to them. The piece became about struggle, survival and interdependence. Sometimes, the only way to overcome and conquer the Sisyphean struggle is with someone else.
The barbell was finally able to be lifted overhead when Ivy and I lifted the barbell together, both struggling, both surviving and both overcoming. Once what seemed like an impossible task was conquered, the boat was left empty, in the middle of the water, the barbell with tractor tires remained on the unbalanced, ever-moving platform and Ivy, Ian and I swam back to shore in the darkness. The next day, during daylight, people swam out to the platform to try and lift the barbell. The floating barbell had became a functional installation. People were its activation, as long as they tried and failed with one another.
Trousseau, 2015, Boston Center for the Arts, Cyclorama, Boston, MA
Trousseau is a two channel video installation part of a four channel large-scale sculpture installation titled THE WEIGHT featured at the Boston Center for the Arts, Cyclorama.
The artist has personally welded a steel barbell with specific seats for each parent. The seats are configured as throne-like puzzle pieces that can fit together side by side or on top of each other when taken off the barbell.
Her work alludes to Albert Camus Myth of Sisyphus where one's fulfillment comes from the process of struggling and failing.
In 2016, Trousseau was featured in the exhibition From Me to You at the ProArts Gallery in Oakland, CA.
Burn the Bachelorette's Red Scarf, 2014, Boston Center for the Arts, Cyclorama
Burn the Red Bachelorette's Scarf is a multichannel video series. Spiro explores the connection between weightlifting and folk dance as a new celebratory ritual for understanding the relationship between the artist and her parents, as well as the present and the past. By experimenting with indeterminate methods, Spiro wants the viewer to access the otherwise inaccessible domestic spaces. Her works are characterized by the use of everyday objects in which recognition plays an important role. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of societal values, she absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. She examines the common language of sports, dance, and performance and what it means to perform inside and outside a space. What is left when the performer is gone?
© 2014 Kledia Spiro
Training to Lift My Parents, 2015, Mission Hill Gallery, Boston, MA
At the age of six, Spiro was one the subject's of her father's dissertation titled “The Child through Psychological Views of Freud and Piaget”. She decided she would re-write her father's dissertation through video and make him and her mother the subjects. The elements in which Spiro would study them would be through lifting objects. Weightlifting is only a means to understanding what the gesture of lifting an object in the air, above one's head means.
Training to Lift My Parents is a video-performance where the artist has personally welded a steel barbell with specific seats for each parent. The seats are configured as throne-like puzzle pieces that can fit together side by side or on top of each other when taken off the barbell.
Weightlifting became a metaphor for something much bigger than success or empowerment, overcoming struggle or immigration or war or any personal struggle. It was about showing that everyone has something to lift in their lives. For Spiro, it is her parents. They are the “mythical giants” of her world, the ones that sacrificed their whole life to create a new one for her and her sister. Spiro is always carrying that weight and wants to one day be able to “lift them up”and live up to their legacy. She may never be able to because of everything her parents carry and hold inside them, but she will always try. That is her life goal.
Photo credit: Ryan McMahon
My Mom!, 2014, video-performance series, Green Hill Memorial Park, Worcester, MA
Mom and Dad (Mami dhe Babi), 2014
Mom and Dad is a three channel video installation and on going series with my parents. I set up an obstacle course for my mom, dad and sister with various house and school materials. I then proceeded to teach them each how to learn the olympic lifts. The video-performance became a kind of ritual and way for me to introduce and share my love of weightlifting through their love of Albanian dance.
Babi, My Mythical Giant, 2014
Mending, 2015, Great American Performance Art Festival, Grace Exhibition Space, NY, NY
Ripped and Shredded, 2015, Mission Hill Gallery, Boston, MA
Everlasting is a performance series about my childhood memories in Albania and the civil war of 1997. Memories are often closely contained, yet reconfigured every time they are told. This series focuses on my memories with my Grandfather and my experience of war at a young age.
Weightless Saturation, 2014, Piano Craft Gallery, Boston, MA
Photos by Justin Tuerk
Review from Leah Rafaela Ceriello:
Before Kledia Spiro begins her performance, the audience circles around a large, irregularly shaped rectangle of plywood. Surrounding the plywood are boxes, some open, some closed. The open ones have colors visible that are completely saccharine. Fake. Straight from the tube. Plus plastic utensils, cheap brushes and pens scattered across the floor.
Spiro walks into the room, in a bronze, spandex body suit, completely zipped up and covering her head, hands and feet. She breathes heavily and takes a seat on the piece of plywood.
She begins, and we find that she is trying to write. The words that she is trying to write are not legible. The only word that I can make out is anxiety. From the sound of Spiro's breathing and from the frantic way in which she is scratching, painting and at times clawing the words into the plywood, we find that throughout the course of this performance, she is making sort of a drawing with text- or viciously trying to.
Artificiality, and anxiety. What is the cause of these? Can they be attributed to the same thing?
Spiro tries to force the materials to submit to her will but they won't. First the pen won't work. Then the paint is too gloppy.
You can read the rest of this essay on Mintable.app
The Decapitated Princess, 2013, Mobius, Cambridge, MA
Experimental Structures in Performance was an event derived from many weeks of playing around with various strategies and structures of performing-while performing. Based primarily on actions, I developed my own systems, structures and maps for my work. Each map was laid over each successive map to construct a whole. The performances, though constructed individually, overlapped, collaborated and connected as the performance developed throughout the evening. Each artist was working with their own duration, from 16 continuous hours to 5 min. segments linked together over 2 hours.
Body Worlds: Weightless Saturation Series, 2014
The body painting and photos were completed by artist Rae Rice.
Up-Rooting, 2014
LG Supports the Arts, Art of the Pixel, NY, NY
Refraction Show, Mission Hill Gallery, Boston, MA
By questioning where one is and the concept of movement, Spiro investigates the gesture of lifting objects overhead and it's effects. She uses weight lifting as a symbol of her family's immigration struggle.
Self Portrait, 2014
Self Portrait, was a performance at the Bathaus, Boston, MA. It is part of the "Wherever You Go, There You Are" series.
Below is an artist statement by the artist regarding the curated performance event:
Healthy? Strong? Feminine? Elegant? Graceful? Beautiful? What do all these things mean? Can I be strong and feminine? As a teenager and young adult, I constantly examined my identity.
Now, as an athlete in an Olympic Weightlifting team, I find myself asking what it means to be a woman, an artist, an athlete. Can I be all three at once? Can I exist and succeed in two male dominated cultures: weightlifting and art-making, while retaining my “femininity”? These are questions that consume me.
Every time I step on the platform, I find a new strength, a new me. There is no more thinking. I just have to be present. Right here, this moment. Be mindful of every position. Hours of training cumulate to 1.2 seconds. That is the time it takes to get the weight from the floor to the air. Weightlifting is my mediation. It is where I find peace. It is my sanctuary. Yet, weightlifting is also a battleground. I am battling my body and my mind. The negative voices that say: why can’t you do it? Why are you so weak? Then, I stop and I say to myself, let’s go! You can do this! Easy weight! While I’m in a male-dominated sport, I feel the most feminine and beautiful performing in this sport. The weightlifting gives me the power, the self confidence to continue, to push through. Yet, it is this physical strength that turns into mental strength. The mental strength is what makes me who I am.
In my performances I explore the meaning of strength, meditation, beauty and femininity through physical training. The platform which I stand on and the objects which I lift with become precious objects to me as they are helping me live a better life. They challenge me every time I hold them and force me to be mindful and face obstacles, until I overcome them. “All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment vital and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.” Martha Graham
Wherever You Go, There You Are, 2014
A metal bar and bumper plates. They need each other. They are codependent. They travel together. They communicate with all the other weights. They are part of a network. They create a language of their own. I want to magnify their world, their subtleties, and their language.
The barbell and different colored bumper plates are constantly changing. One fraction of a second they face one way then they completely rotate the other way. They resist gravity with the help of my body, yet they seem to float in space as they are first dropped from above my head.
The Trilogy: the Female, the Artist and the Athlete, 2013
