VERÓNICA PEÑA
with TARA GLADDEN

"The Water Tank Sessions I"

Long-Distance Live Online Collaboration
Live Underwater Performance (IN) + Live Sound (MD)
Hosted online by Grace Exhibition Space, NY
November 20, 2020

THE WATER TANK SESSIONS, curated by Verónica Peña, is a new series of long-distance audio-visual collaborations that invites professional musicians, singers, and sound artists to play and improvise while being inspired by the vision of the submerged human body.

For the first enactment of the series, invited sound artist Tara Gladden and underwater performance artist Verónica Peña collaborate live from different states of the U.S. Hosted by Grace Exhibition Space, NYC, using a digital online platform, the artists present the audience with a unique auditory and visual experience that combines hypnotic sounds with the enchanting vision of the suspended body.

THE WATER TANK SESSIONS wants to foster collaboration among artists in order to promote joy, togetherness, and creativity from our homes. By bringing artists together, and generating distinct audiovisual experiences for the audience, the project wants to help palliate the solitude, sadness, and hard daily circumstances created by the pandemic.

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http://www.ctaragladden.org

The Water Tank Sessions

Introduction:
HECTOR CANONGE & VERÓNICA PEÑA are performance artists working at the convergence of various disciplines. Peña (Spain/USA) and Canonge (American, born in Argentina) live and work in the United States. Though living in different states, they have been collaborating in various projects internationally since 2016. Their long distance collaborations, Peña in Indiana and Canonge in New York City, reflect their mutual connection, understanding, and mediation as a way to communicate with one another. Instead of an obstacle, distance has been a mode of production to find alternatives for their creative process.

Project description:
LAZOS (Entanglements) is a work of performance art in which we question interpersonal communications, human correspondence, and gender stereotypes through a set of various polarities, such as: attraction / repulsion, familiarity / strangeness, similar / distinct, and strength / frailty. Through corporal actions and slow movements, we interact by dismantling the fabric helmets that mask our facial identities. First in silence and then following the sounds of Indian chants mixed with techno beats, we establish a dialogue that challenges socially constructed gender stereotypes and norms of communication.

As a collaborative work, LAZOS (Entanglements) brings to the stage our practice in Performance Art, Dance, and Visual Arts. Coming from different disciplines has allowed us to explore and create our own style in the performances we develop and present. Our work integrates our own cultural backgrounds, and reflects upon our differences and similarities in relation to the themes we raise, question, and evoke. Working together allows us to dialog about controversial topics, to negotiate our different opinions, and to contemplate new perspectives for creative possibilities. Our collaborative process starts with images, thoughts, words, sounds that later evolve into full experiential performances that often blur the lines of performance, dance, and physical theater. For five years, we have been collaborating and presenting our projects in museums, galleries, theaters, and public sites in the United States, Europe and Latin America. LAZOS (Entanglements) is a project that allowed us to further explore notions of power, gender relations, and communication that afflict our contemporary society.

Biography:
HECTOR CANONGE & VERÓNICA PEÑA met in 2014 during their participation at the Month of Performance Art in Berlin. After presenting work independently in the United States, and coinciding in various programs in Europe and Latin America, they decided to collaborate in a series of works exploring themes of identity, migration, intercultural exchange, and human cohesion. As collaborators, since 2016, they presented their work in the United States and abroad. In New York City, they have performed: Groovink in Art In Odd Places Festival; Lazos (Entanglements) at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and Last Frontier NYC; De lo Sano (of the Sane) at Knockdown Center, De lo Posible (of Possibilities) at Triskelion Arts; De lo Ajeno (of Others) at Queens Museum, and Rabbithole; De lo Lejano (of the Distant) at Panoply Performance Lab; and De Lo Nuestro (of Ours) at The Woods Cooperative. Their collaborative work was shown in their exhibition UNDER OUR SKIN: Body and Territory in Performance Art at the Patti and Rusty Rueff Gallery, Purdue University, Indiana; and HORIZONTES (Horizons), at Salisbury University Art Galleries, Maryland, United States. In Spain, as part of their project Derivas y Jornadas, they presented their work at Fundación BilbaoArte, Bilbao; Festival Intramurs, Valencia; Tabacalera, Madrid; La Grey Gallery; Tarragona; and La Gota de Leche, Logroño, among others. In Portugal, they performed at Zaratan Arte Contemporânea, and at Ana Lama Gallery. In 2018, their performance work was featured at La Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, France, and they were invited to create an installation for the land art residency program Arte en la Tierra, La Rioja, Spain. The artists are currently working in an upcoming catalogue of their work to be introduced in a future exhibition in 2021.

Important: Please, for higher resolution images contact us at veronicapemaratgmaildotcom and hectorcanongeatgmaildotcom.


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