Verónica Peña's "The Body In The Substance"

Video documentation of the August 27, 2021 (7 PM EST) performance of The Body In The Substance presented by Franklin Furnace and Verónica Peña.

Recorded on Zoom, edited by Jenna Kramer (Fall Intern, 2021).

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.”

Artist: Verónica Peña

Performance Assistant: Hae Won Sohn

Sound with: Tara Gladden

ARTIST BIO

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. Peña has exhibited/performed primarily in Europe and America. In the US: Coaxial Arts Foundation (2021), Pioneer Works (*2020 postponed due to Covid-19), Grace Exhibition Space (2020), Smack Mellon, Triskelion Arts, Queens Museum, Hemispheric Institute, SAIC (Visiting Artist), Times Square Alliance, Armory Show, Defibrillator Art Gallery, Gabarron Foundation, Dumbo Arts Festival, among others. She is currently an artist-in-residence at NARS Foundation, was selected for Creative Capital NYC Taller 19-20, and received a Franklin Furnace Fund 17- 18. She published “The Presence Of The Absent”, was reviewed by Donald Kuspit, and on Hyperallergic. Peña leads Performance Art Open Call, an 18,000 members FB Community.

Peña is a 2017 Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient.