Based in Zurich, Alexandra Bachzetsis is an artist and choreographer whose practice spans performance, film and video, photography, and installation. She studied at the Liceo Artistico in Zurich, Accademia Teatro Dimitri in Verscio, and in the Performance Education Program at STUK Kunstencentrum in Leuven, and holds a postgraduate degree from DasArts, Academy of Theatre and Dance, in Amsterdam. Bachzetsis has worked as a dancer in the contemporary dance and performance context, performing with Sasha Waltz & Guests in Berlin and les ballets C de la B in Ghent, among others.
Bachzetsis’s work revolves around choreographies of the body that consider how subjectivities are continually created and re-created in physical, imaginary, and virtual environments. In her performances, she interrogates media culture, the contemporary spectacle, and vernacular performance genres as sources and repositories of gesture, expression, desire, and identification. Within these, she scrutinizes the mutual influence between “popular” or “commercial” genres—including fashion, music videos, and television—and the use of gesture and movement in histories of dance, art, photography, and cinema. Since she began working independently in 2001, Bachzetsis’s work has been characterized by collaboration, methods of transference, and a plurality of voices and bodies. These aspects are reflected in this monograph, which features contributions by many of her former and current collaborators.
Over the past two decades, Bachzetsis has created more than thirty major works, which have been shown in theatres, museums, biennials, and festivals around the world. Her work has also been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including Notebook (Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, 2023); 2020: Obscene (Kunsthaus Zürich, 2022); Rehearsal (ongoing) (Karma International, Zurich, 2021); An Ideal for Living (Centre culturel suisse, Paris, 2018); Massacre: Variations on a Theme (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017); and Show (Kunsthalle Basel, 2008).
Bachzetsis has worked on a number of large commissions, for which she collaborated with researchers and curators. Most recently, major new commissions were presented at The Art Institute of Chicago and Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg (Chasing a Ghost, 2019); PACT Zollverein in Essen, Pioneer Works in New York, and Centre Pompidou in Paris (Escape Act, 2018–19); Fondazione Furla in Milan, documenta 14 in Athens/Kassel, and the High Line in New York (Private: Wear a Mask When You Talk to Me and Private Song, 2016–18); Tate Modern in London and Museo Jumex in Mexico City (From A to B via C, 2014); and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Fundação de Serralves in Porto, and Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (The Stages of Staging, 2013).
Bachzetsis’s performances, video installations, and sculptures have also been included in numerous group exhibitions and biennials, such as Moving Bodies, Moving Images, Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2022); documenta 14 (Athens/Kassel, 2017); Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement (Geneva, 2014); dOCUMENTA (13) (Kassel, 2012); 11th Baltic Triennial of International Art (Vilnius, 2012); 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki, 2011); L’Escorte at CAC–Brétigny (Brétigny-sur-Orge, 2011); and the 5th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (Berlin, 2008).
Bachzetsis is a laureate of the Zurich Art Prize (2018), Swiss Art Awards (2016 and 2011), Swiss Performance Art Award (2012), Migros-Kulturprozent Jubilee Award (2007), and she was a nominee for the DESTE Prize (2011).