Yeni & Nan (Jennifer Hackshaw, born 1948 and Maria Luisa González, born 1956), is a Venezuelan pioneer collective of performance art, active between 1977 and 1986. Yeni & Nan are known for the work developed in the early 1980s, such as Integraciones en Agua (Integrations in Water, 1980) and Transfiguración elemento tierra (Earth Element Transfiguration, 1983), which focus on a symbolic activation of body-water, and body-earth. They conceptualize these two elements as both feminine and transitional: interconnected with the origin of life and in constant flux. Nevertheless, the inception of these important later works related to the feminine, nature, metamorphosis, and space, emerge from the early investigations that began in London, while studying there, with the first performance, Cuerpo línea (Body Line, 1977) presented at the Chelsea College of Arts, and Nacimiento I y II (Birth I and II, 1979) shown at the Galería Universitaria de Arte Ángel Boscán at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas on June 10, 1979.
Yeni & Nan are multidisciplinary artists, not only because they studied fine arts, photography and cinema, but because Nan practiced Zen meditation and Yoga, and Yeni practiced Tai Chi Chuan, a form of martial art. In their art practice they integrated several disciplines, producing work that combined performance, installation art, photography, video, drawings, writings and poetry.
Yeni & Nan returned to Caracas on May 29, 1979 after studying art and photography in London and Cannes, and less than two weeks after their arrival they presented Nacimiento I y II (1979), their first performance in Venezuela. The theme of birth, as the origin of life, was central to Yeni & Nan’s work from the duo’s inception. Birth in Nacimiento I y II is articulated as a freeing act, both related to the physical act of being born but centrally to a symbolic and spiritual existential birth. The elements in the performance were minimal, they dressed in white and wore white bed sheets, starting with Yeni, who was slowly woven and tied up by Nan to become a vertical cocoon, followed by actions and sounds that denoted struggle in the attempt to free the body, the mind, and the spirit. The title does not imply that there were two stages to the birth, but that there were two individual births taking place. They write on Nacimiento, “To define birth in two separate concepts and sensitivities, through the same materials and same language. White, sheet, string, body. Two different experiences, two separate installations, two diverse sensitivities, in one single content.”[1] The resulting actions were a dialogical interplay between intuitive, spontaneous actions and conceptual intent, which Nan describes today as, “an intuitive flux of consciousness, and a connection with a cellular memory.”[2] The Venezuelan scholar María Elena Ramos, who was close to the artists, writes in 1982 on Nacimiento, “It’s a metamorphosis (of the being and also of the image). It’s growth towards freedom, birth. The white sheet (the cortex), the string which ties, denotes symbolic connotations of initiation, purity, and evoke ancient rites of innocence.”[3] This comment stresses the ritualistic, symbolic nature of Yeni & Nan’s work. As a form of writing, it echoes the type of conceptual visual poetry that accompanies the artists’ work.
Nacimiento, as with their other performances, is the result of a long process of research, conceptualization and planning, through conversation, drawings and writings. Once the concepts and actions were decided, Nan would meditate and transcribe the final texts that accompanied the works. These were a cross between poetry and conceptual writing, often involving a special configuration and temporality of language that embodied a performative and aesthetic quality that was akin to the actions. Part of the process was the production of works which stand in their own right but are also transitional pieces for the making of more definitive works. This is the case with Cuerpo línea (1977) which establishes tensions between the body and space by framing the body with the lines of a tennis court; and subsequently with Tensiones reflexivas (Reflexive Tensions, 1979) a series of experimental, performative actions recorded in polaroid and photography, where the lines are marked on the body itself.
The artists consider Tensiones reflexivas as closely related to Nacimiento. In these series of images, we find parts of the body, such as the hands and face, which have been tied up with string, thus staging a struggle between oppression and resistance. The string exercises tension and violence by imprisoning and forcing the hands into uncomfortable positions, or by limiting the movement of the head. In some of the images the string becomes lines that overflow the image, creating a new spatial geometry that reframes parts of the body. In Nacimiento, the string no longer ties fragments of the body, but it entraps its totality. The oppressive strings bind the body in a chaotic sewing that constrains breathing, the very essence of being alive. As Margarita D’Amico, who filmed the artists’ performances in Nan’s garden, wrote for the exhibition catalogue, “Yeni creates shapes and breaks her ties through actions of pure inner energy; Nan frees herself through profoundly violent gestures and sounds.”[4] This process of birth as metamorphic and cathartic acts of liberation can be seen in dialogue with some key works by other pioneer female artists in Latin America in that same time period, such as Lygia Clark’s (Brazil, 1920–1988) Tunel, 1973; Celeida Tostes’s (Brazil, 1929-1995) Passagem, 1979; and Maria Evelia Marmolejo’s (Colombia, 1958) Sesquilé, 1985, which focus on the powerful and transformative feminine event of birth.
An aspect to be highlighted about Nacimiento and the subsequent development of the work is the multiple lives of the performative act. This performance was reenacted on several further occasions, each time a little different, culminating in the performance made for the show 20 artistas venezolanos de hoy, which was presented at avant-garde space Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC) in Buenos Aires in 1979. For this initial iteration of the piece, Yeni & Nan made an installation with polaroids and two video displays, which ran simultaneously in the gallery space at Galería Universitaria de Arte, where they realized a performance. A great number of photographs of Nacimiento were taken during the performance in Nan’s garden with a backdrop of natural rich foliage and grass, which further underscored the themes of life and vitality. However, the performances photographed at the Galería Universitaria de Arte have a more subdued and phantasmagorical quality: the ghostly white bodies of the artists are covered in white sheets and woven with strings that fade into the background of the white walls of the gallery. When the duo disbanded in 1986, the trove of supporting material created during these performances has allowed Nacimiento to take on a new presence, as the inception of singular and powerful notions of birth as ritual and origin of life. This and other works are witness and testament to the intense creativity engendered by Yeni & Nan and serve as an alternate lens through which the viewers of today can approach the liberated female body in the context of experimental contemporary art.
[1] Author’s own translation. Original text reads, “Definir Nacimiento en dos conceptos y sensibilidades diferentes, a través de los mismos materiales y lenguajes. Blanco, sábana, hilo, cuerpo. Dos experiencias diferentes, dos montajes diferentes, dos sensibilidades diferentes, en un solo contenido”. Nacimiento I Nacimiento II, Nan y Yeni: performance art, Galeria Universitaria de Arte, Dirección de Cultura UCV, 10. Caracas, Venezuela: 24 de junio 1979. N.p.
[2] Written conversation with the artist, March 2018.
[3] Author’s own translation. Original quote reads, “Es una metamórfosis (del ser y también de la imagen). Es crecimiento hacia: libertad nacer. La tela blanca (la corteza), el hilo que ata, propician connotaciones simbólicas de iniciación, pureza, evocan antiguos ritos de inocencia.” Maria Elena Ramos, “Yeni & Nan o el espacio transformado,” in Yeni & Nan Performance Art 1979–1981. Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional, 1982, p. 5.
[4] Author’s own translation. Original quote reads, “Jeni creando formas y rompiendo ataduras mediante acciones de pura energía interior; Nan liberándose con gestos y sonidos de una violencia profunda.” Margarita D’Amico, “Performance Art”, Ibid.