veronica a pèrez

essay by: Kat Zagaria Buckley, Director of Art Exhibitions and Outreach

images by: Jack Stoltz

The work of Veronica A. Perez might be described as interdisciplinary sculpture. It also might be characterized as fiber art, community art, or even, at times, horror art. Imposing yet retaining a delicate intricacy, the work in shadow / echo / memory is an immersive installation that subverts the material and scale expectations of the white cube gallery in order to facilitate a needed conversation around fractured identities, representation, and power.  

Perez’s work in shadow / echo / memory falls into two categories: large structures primarily comprised of artificial hair intertwined into thousands of intricate braids, and long, cushion-like sculptures which twist upon themselves. Some works resist gravity and snake off the wall and toward the viewer, simultaneously welcoming touch and causing one to recoil. But whenever one tries to define the forms — are they ovular? rectangular? — Perez’s work performs an evasive maneuver, just as it does in-person, perceptually. Masses of braids seem to undulate before our eyes; their unspooling, rippling surfaces beckon as much as they confuse. Perez’s sculptures resist direct observation and reconfigure within our peripheral vision. This ambiguity is strategic; Perez’s work defies easy categorization in order to posit potential futures. This “what am I seeing” hints at the depths of what Perez explores, namely, relationships: between the self and the family, community and archive, viewer and material, perception and object, labor and rest, and work and gallery. 

Perez has stated that they make all of their work with their father in mind. A native Puerto Rican, Perez’s father settled in the Bronx, was drafted into the army, had four children, and passed away at age 60, when Perez was 23. He left very few personal possessions or writing behind, causing Perez to lack a clear picture of who he was. They consider their work to be totems for him. A critical examination of their father, his life, who he might have been, who he might be for the artist, and who he will be for them and the audience that encounters these works. These considerations of family and heritage have led Perez to focus on hair and its ability to braid, bind, and hold memories. 

Hair, and the styling of hair, are heavy with cultural significance. Perez’s works contain incalculable numbers of braids, weighing upon one another. As their work grew in scale, they involved community participants to braid the artificial hair that comprises their sculptures. As participants braided, they discussed the memories that the act conjured. Perez found that the action of braiding was enabling somatic processing, with its repetitive movements allowing practitioners to enter a meditative state and access memories that may not otherwise be recalled. Perez was compelled to capture these moments and built an oral history archive rooted in the personal experiences of Black, Brown, LatinX, Indigenous, and Asian communities focused on hair. Without Perez’s workshops and the somatic processing they facilitate, these experiences may otherwise never be recalled, archived, or shared. These stories are now incorporated into Perez’s sculptures. Participant memories, and their subsequent sharing via artwork, allow others to experience first-hand the link between hair and identity. 

In addition to the communally braided sculptures, shadow / echo / memory showcases new directions in Perez’s practice. Thin strands of hair no longer compose the braids. Instead, thick, long pillows twirl around one other. The fabrics Perez utilizes in these new sculptures shine and glimmer against a black ground. They recall interstellar skies or depths of the sea in which light fades to a murky shimmer. In this way, Perez’s materials mimic the phenomena that envelop us above and below and yet are fundamentally unknowable. 

Simultaneously, Perez’s cushions imply a need for rest, markedly contrasting with the intricate and tedious labor that created the forms built with artificial hair. And yet, the need for rest coils in on itself, reflecting our contemporary condition of tortuous unease with the concept of rest. These new sculptures give their visual weight to labor exploitation past and present and its attendant forbidden rest. The horror influence on Veronica’s work here lurks just beneath its pillowy surface. The cushions beckon one in with a promise of comfort. Once engaged, the work invites an interrogation of what it means to “rest easy,” and who holds us as we sink into form-fitting foam comfort.

The work in shadow / echo / memory combines accessibility through its material elements of hair and fiber with theoretical grounding. Appropriately, three main theoretical underpinnings emerge from Perez’s work: Afrofuturism, which features futuristic themes incorporating aspects of Black culture¹; potential history, which calls on us to recognize an alternative, anti-imperialist heritage that our past offers our present²; and radical imagination, which posits that we imagine institutions not as they are but as they might be, then rescue that theoretical from the future and implement it in our present.³

Through these lenses, Perez’s braids can be understood as representing the past, present, and future, creating a multiverse through their combination. With the incorporation of first-hand accounts and memories of hair, the sculptures gain multisensorial resonance. Ever-expanding and encompassing, Perez’s sculptures creep toward the viewer and swallow the austere architecture of the gallery with the weight of first-hand histories made manifest, hinting at depths untold, inaccessible, and unknowable — but whose acknowledgment, memories, and imagination can give way to a future that prioritizes joy. 

Of the theoretical lenses, Perez has said they most often employ radical imagination. The theory provides the artist with a framework to consider the realities of colonialism, imperialism, and gentrification, and allows the artist to offer a future that acknowledges these elements of our past. Similarly, radical imagination helps Perez to consider the lives that their father could have led, using the past and the present to imagine a new future. They say, “Just imagining Black, Indigenous, Asian, and LatinX people in the future is really important. It shows us that we still exist.”⁴

1. First coined by Mark Dery in  “Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose,” in Dery, Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 180.

2.  As theorized by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay in Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (Verso Books, 2019).

3. Adrienne Maree Brown’s “Closing Remarks,” in Fall Retreat (Environmental Grantmakers Association Conference, New York, NY, 2015), https://adriennemareebrown.net/2015/09/30/closing-remarks-to-environmental-grantmakers-association/. See also the interview with Silvia Federici and essays by Isaac Saney and Sherry Pictou in Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven, The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (Halifax; Winnipeg: London: Zed Books, 2014).

4. Veronica A Perez, A Conversation with 2023 Artist-in-Residence Veronica A. Perez, interview by Kat Zagaria Buckley, February 14, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioGcJX-Uu3A.