SANGRíA, is a free public Performance Art event curated by Verónica Peña on the topic of BLOOD, SANGRE in Spanish, featuring artists Arantxa Araujo, Miao Jiaxin, and Ivan Vergara.
Friday, November 22, 7:30-10:00PM at Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative, 424 W 54 St,
tickets: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/sangria-tickets-81880750529
“The search for peace is an endless human endeavor. I feel that we live in an increasingly violent and unstable time, and I think it is important to counteract violence and fear by promoting art performances that inspire tolerance and mutual understanding”. Verónica Peña, Founder of Collective Becoming.
COLLECTIVE BECOMING is an ongoing Performance Art initiative of international scope that wants to contribute to the above mentioned endeavor by fostering collaboration amongst artists to promote empathy, freedom, and human unity. “Sangría” is the fourth project to be developed under the umbrella of Collective Becoming. Previous projects include “Homeostasis”, which took place at Viridian Artists Gallery on Chelsea, New York City, 2019; “Expressions of Love, Freedom, and Resistance” at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC, Sullivan Galleries, 2016; and “The Urban Caress”, as part of the Month of Performance Art in Berlin, Germany, 2015.
SANGRíA is a Performance Art Series that explores human unity and the experience of life through the topic of blood, “sangre” in Spanish. SANGRE is the fluid that keeps us alive, it nourishes and cleanses our body, circulates inside us only stopping when we die, it sustains life and action, and we share it to save the lives of others. SANGRíA, besides the well-known sweet Spanish alcoholic drink made of fruits and wine, it also means the extraction of blood, the act and effect of bleeding, and the mess caused by the act of killing. SANGRíA (san-gree-uh) is a word that may suggest sweetness and pleasure, at the same time that evokes hard, threatening images in connection with blood. This duality inspires the first event of the series, presenting the work of artists: ARANTXA ARAUJO, MIAO JIAXIN, and IVAN VERGARA.
*Free event. $5.00 Suggested donation. As part of the evening, SANGRíA, made following an original Spanish recipe, will be offered to the audience. Purchase it on Eventbrite to get a better price! Profits will help to support the artists.
Invited Artists:
Arantxa Araujo is a Mexican artist with a background in neuroscience. Her work is essentially multidisciplinary, feminist, and rooted in bio-behavioral research. Explorations of gender constructions, performativity and identity, and the politics of migration are seen and experienced in her installations, which often include video, sound, photography, mapping, light, and performance. Her work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, at the Radical Women Latin American Art Exhibit, Chashama Space to Present, Grace Exhibition Space, Glasshouse Gallery, The Queens Museum, Panoply Lab, Art in Odd Places in NYC; RAW during Miami Art Week; the Semel and Huret & Spector Gallery in Boston, and the SPACE Gallery and Bunker Projects in Pittsburgh; in Mexico, at El Monumento a la Revolución and La Explanada del MUAC, during the Hemispheric Institute’s Encuentro and El Vicio; also participated in the Nuit Blanche Festival in Saskatoon, Canada. Araujo is a Franklin Furnace Fund for performance art award recipient (2020), an LMCC (2019) grantee and has received support through numerous residencies and fellowships including Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship (2019-2020), Creative Capital taller (2018), ITP Camp (2018, 2019) and EMERGENYC (2017). http://www.arantxaaraujo.com @ArantxaAraujo
Miao Jiaxin Beginning in Shanghai, where his photography works expressed the universal theme of urban angst, Miao then immigrated to New York, expanding his view of urban streets towards a more conceptual public stage. Among his performative practices across different media, Miao has blended his naked body into the bleak streets of a midnight New York City, traveled inside a suitcase hauled by his mother through urban crowds, made live-feed erotic performances on an interactive pornographic broadcasting website, and dressed as a Chinese businessman for an entire year when working towards his MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is more widely known for converting his New York studio into a jail and charging $1 per night as accommodation on Airbnb. The same studio later was converted again to be a blind dating (meeting) spot, as well as a massage therapy clinic. Miao’s works often express the ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic tension that always exists between the individual and governing or cultural authorities, questioning assumptions about power in relation to identity politics. He posits the artist’s nature as one who transgresses boundaries, challenges consensus, and stays distance from authorities.
http://www.miaojiaxin.com/ @MiaoJiaxinStudio
Ivan Vergara (Mexico, 1979) is a poet, musician, editor, cultural manager, and documentary maker. He is the Director of the PLACA (Platform of Andalusian Chilango Artists) Mexico-Spain-USA, and Editor of Ultramarina C&D Publishing House. Vergara directs cultural events that foster interaction among various art forms. He coordinated fourteen editions of the International Poetry Festival Chilango Andaluz (RCA) in Seville, Mexico City, and different cities of Mexico and Spain. He worked as an actor and theater director, short film director, and radio host. He was a member of the folk-rock group Mañana, with whom he published his first album ‘A ver quién llega antes al fin’ in 2010. He is currently preparing the recording of the LP Why We O!, the continuation of his first EP ‘Canción orgánica’. In 2013, with Editorial Ultramarina C&D he published the extensive poems ‘Era Hombre Era Mito Era Bestia / Man Myth Beast’, translated to English by Jennifer Rathbun. In 2011 he published the short poetry book “Mountains of Aurelia” with Homoscriptum Publishing House, New York. His poetry is currently being studied at Salisbury University, Maryland. He creates multidisciplinary performances such as ‘Arde Trinidad’, performed in NY, CDMX, Madrid, and Londres, among others.
http://www.facebook.com/ivanvergaraweb @decomedula
Curator:
Veronica Peña is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator from Spain based in the United States. Her work explores the themes of absence, separation, and the search for harmony through Performance Art. Peña is interested in migration policies, cross-cultural dialogue, liberation, and women’s empowerment. Peña has presented her work in various countries around Europe, Asia, and America. In the United States, her work was featured at Times Square, Armory Show, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Queens Museum, Smack Mellon Foundation, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Grace Exhibition Space, Triskelion Arts, Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, Momenta Art Gallery, Pøst Art Gallery, Gabarron Foundation, Dumbo Arts Festival, and Consulate General of Spain in New York, amongst others. She is a recipient of a Franklin Furnace Fund 2017-18 and was nominated to a VIA Art Fund. She published “The Presence Of The Absent”, a thesis about her body of work. She was a visiting artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She curates “Collective Becoming”, an initiative to make cities a place less hostile. She is currently at work on her project about freedom, fear, and resistance, “The Body In The Substance.”
http://www.veronicapena.com @Veronica_Pena_Live_Art
