Linda Swim II

Linda Karshan has turned her drawing practice into a form of performance, in which the body’s gestures are the driving force behind the composition. As part of the Josef and Anni Albers exhibition, she presents her first public performance of drawing in water. From the living rooms where her works on paper are exhibited to the Villa’s swimming pool, the artist invites you to witness this unique creative process.

When the American artist discovered the gridded floor of the Villa Empain pool, she instinctively felt that it had to be ‘swum’. At her 2018 exhibition at San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, she felt just as strongly that the Abbey’s perfectly proportioned chapter house needed to be walked in.

Linda Karshan’s performance drawings, whether on paper or in space, are produced in an exceptional state of presence. They are guided by her inner choreography and aspire to conditions of near-zero gravity.