Veronica Pena, The Body In The Substance, Underwater Performance. Photograph

“…In a similar obliquely Spanish vein, Verónica Peña mortifies her flesh, like a self-martyred saint, wrapping her body in bandages to suggest her wounded, not to say mentally-disturbed self – the Spanish saints were experts in suffering and self-denial, as St. Teresa and St John of the Cross famously made clear. Her attempt to heal herself is not exactly successful, for we see her floating, Ofelia-like, in the East River, apparently a suicide sanctified by the Gothic arches of the Brooklyn bridge above her…” Donald Kuspit about my work “Healing Time”. The Gabarron Foundation at the Armory Show 2010 catalog. Harmony and peace are endless human endeavors. I am an interdisciplinary artist. My current practice mixes performance art, painting, sculpture, and installation. My work tries to attain harmony and peace through achieving communion with other human beings, either present or absent. My performances involve very slow motions and having the body fully covered by some type of material. Thus, my performances naturally force the body to be still. This stillness is a natural bodily way of achieving harmony and peace. Since achieving communion is an important part of my work, audience participation, either active or passive, is also a natural component of my work.