ARTISTS TO KNOW
GeoVanna Gonzalez, the multidisciplinary artist exploring the notion of Taking Up Space and Commissioner season three artist continues to share her practice through performance.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Gonzalez is a Miami-based artist and has a studio at Bakehouse Art Complex. Her work aims to connect private and public spaces through interventionist, participatory art with an emphasis on collaboration and collectivity. This interview was conducted by independent curator Heike Dempster and edited for brevity.
Heike Dempster, curator: How would you describe your practice?
GeoVanna Gonzalez, artist: It’s a multidisciplinary practice. I work between creating spaces, installations, and functional sculptures, and incorporate performance into my work. A lot of the concepts that I work with are around gender and identity, and ideas around public and private space.
HD: Since we’re all excited to experience this performance, what is your hope for the audience?
GG: I want them to feel connected or like they can see themselves in the work in some way. I hope it provides a moment for reflection or contemplation about how they navigate spaces, and also about taking things for granted. Some people have a lot of access and some people don't. Some people have to think about it and others not at all. Maybe it's a conscious thought after this, something to consider. I hope there can be a moment in which the performance helps people to reflect even for a second on it. I feel really lucky that I can create this, and a lot of feedback I’ve received from previous performances is that people feel really connected to the work. For me, that’s a success.
HD: Can you tell us about the performance you are planning for Untitled Art?
GG: PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT 6 is part of an ongoing project that has different iterations. It's made new each time but is forever going, evolving, and reshaping into something different. That's why there are different acts.
Each time that I present the work, I create a new configuration for the modular sculptural pieces. It’s never presented the same way though it is often accompanied by a performance. For this project with Untitled Art, I'll be working with movement artists Maria Burt and Alondra Balbuena, poet Arsimmer McCoy, and musician Claudens Louis. The overall theme is about how we navigate movement, and how that movement could be experienced through freedom and liberation or also be something that's controlled. I’m working between that tension as well as thinking about the idea of what it means to be alive. So it's like dealing both, with issues of loss and grief, but also joy.
The majority of the performers are women, and aligned with the theme for Untitled Art this year around gender and equity in the arts. My work naturally centers women and queer folks and people of color.
[A previous iteration of Play, Lay Aye opened at September convening Still Here: Generations of Black Miami Artmaking, organized by the Center of Global Black Studies at University of Miami.]
Next Friday, December 8, from 5–5:30 PM on the sands of Miami Beach, local artist GeoVanna Gonzalez presents PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT 6—a performance installation at Untitled Art. Everyone is invited.