The jaguar, Panthera onca, is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus. It is the only Panthera found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest and most powerful feline in the Western Hemisphere. The jaguar’s present range extends from Mexico across much of Central America and south to Paraguay and northern Argentina. Apart from a known and possibly breeding population in Arizona (southwest of Tucson), the cat has largely been extirpated from the United States since the early 1900s. The jaguar has featured prominently in the mythology of numerous indigenous American cultures, including that of the Maya and Aztec. The word jaguar is pronounced /?d?æ?ju?/ or—especially in American English—/?d?æ?w?r/. It comes to English from one of the Tupi-Guarani languages, presumably the Amazonian trade language Tupinambá, via Portuguese jaguar. The Tupian word, yaguara “beast”, sometimes translated as “dog”, is used for any carnivorous mammal; the specific word for jaguar was yaguareté, with the suffix -eté meaning “real” or “true”.

Georgia Sagri’s practice investigates various parameters of language (name-rename); sculpture (extension); imagery (the image when the central object is missing); and performance (composition); often committing her body to mimetic repetitive moves to seduce the viewer while exposing the multitude of associations a simple gesture or word may suggest. Sagri responds to conditions inherent to the performance score, possibly imposed by spatial diagrams and scripts, and antagonizes other conditions that must then be deal with, such as the vital engagement of an audience, rhythmical decisions, passage of time, and issues of translation.

Sagri will perform every day from 11 am – 6 pm, except when she is not. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is and If Approaching Pain Gives You a Way of Recovering the Memory of Flesh Then Go Elsewhere is Sagri’s first solo exhibition in New York. It is the continuation of a practice committed to the idea of event, and relates to Saloon, an ongoing and nomadic series of gatherings in which Sagri interacts with artworks by two artists, generating performance/sound pieces and investigating possibilities of non-reason, improvisation and antagonism. In February of 2009, Sagri presented Yze Aone, a performance for The National Theater in Greece. Other selected exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Anthony Reynolds (2008), and group exhibitions at the AR Contemporary, Milan (2008); Destroy Athens , 1st Athens Biennial (2007); Deste Foundation, Athens (2006, 2001); performance at Smith-Stewart Gallery, New York (2008). She is a founding member of It’s Our Pleasure To Serve You with Adele Roeder, Kerstin Braetsch and Allison Katz, and she is also co-editor with Jaqueline Carpenter and Catherine Czacki of a sound journal, Magazine Forte, launching September 2009.