Curated by
August 28, 2021
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August 27, 2021
August 27, 2021, 7pm
NARS Main Gallery
The Body in the Substance is a process-based ongoing performance art, and science project that Verónica Peña started in 2015, in pursuing to confine the human body as a means to achieving communion with others—either present or absent. For her first live enactment of the project, until now only performed privately and online, Peña will fully submerge herself in a liquid altered to coagulate. In her words: “The search for peace is an endless human endeavor. When the substance coagulates, I am confined in the most beautiful stillness: as vulnerable as the ones still in the womb—unable to move, talk, or see, unable to hurt others. Submersion is a search for harmony, an act of resistance to counteract violence, fear, and injustice. Confined, the self grows, the female body reveals strength, the immigrant body defies distance and separation, the alive search for the absent. Submerged, each inhalation becomes an act of hope, an inquiry of the unknown, a balm for the pain of loss”.
Performance Assistant: Hae Won Sohn
Sound by: Tara Gladden
Registration. Please click here to RSVP.
This event will also be streamed live online at Franklin Furnace.
Please note that this performance contains nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.
About the artist:
VERÓNICA PEÑA (Spain/USA) is an interdisciplinary performance artist, curator, and international-community advocate. Her work explores absence, separation, and the search for human harmony through Performance Art. Her performance installations combine underwater submersion, visual metamorphosis, and audience participation to address global issues of migration, cross-cultural dialogue, peaceful resistance, public liberation, fluidity, and women’s empowerment.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by The SHS Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
