verónica a. pérez is a sculptor deeply engaged in the intersection of sculpture, history, and identity. They use their personal narrative, along with community collaboration, to address themes of erasure and foster interdependence, building humanity and empathy. She does this by hosting community workshops called braiding circles, where participants engage in intentional conversations about identity while braiding textiles. From this way of working, she creates social sculptures*.
The psychological effects of white supremacy inform her exploration into the impacts of colonialism on identity. Pérez's familial history, particularly her father Miguel's experience with the Puerto Rican diaspora, contributes to a fractured family narrative and a distorted sense of identity. Pérez addresses ongoing colonization and historical injustices to Boriken, such as forced sterilization and land displacement, through her work, shedding light on complex intersections and inviting reflection on enduring legacies of oppression and displacement.
Pérez employs materials such as sugar, hair, beads, and textiles to explore the history of colonization, aiming to illuminate and repair its fracturing effects and bring awareness for systemic change. Material culture is important as a means of deepening conversations about diasporic history and identity in a palpable, innate way.
Sugar reveals itself as an emotional and movable material in her work, historical silencing - referencing the silencing of the West Indies and its people in historical context, such as the Spanish-American War and the exploitation of sugar plantations in Borikén. Hands erased by the rising seas - and hair left in place. A silent, powerful echo of the ancestors.
Hair references stand-ins for bodies no longer present, as hair can hold multitudes in its strands. History, identity, and culture are all intertwined within the hair used in the sculptures, incorporating braids to evoke emotions and the
myriad of stolen histories repaired by the community through braiding and conversation. In such pieces as who will take care of me…when you die? and cacophonous ancestral apparition. The work's largeness and initially formidable appearance then begin to evoke a nurturing embrace, inviting viewers to perceive the love within rather than succumb to fear.
The braided sculptures' forms reflect this sense – amorphous, organic, undulating. Reminiscent of slime, with a viscous quality that seems to be trying to find its shape – a terra birthed out of coiling masses of hair formed by stories. tensions of potential hold these tenets - as well as adorned with beads, trinkets, and other elements.
The blackness of the works echoes the spaces that colonization has touched - This sense of disconnection, of missing one’s identity, feels like the work Bore in the Darkness of our Hair: vast, black, and infinite - an inky void teeming with forgotten possibilities and untold stories waiting to be remembered. As Yasmín Hernández, rematriator of Borikén, says: Shining a light in the dark is a collaborative effort guiding us towards our collective liberation.
When Pérez creates, she holds precious spaces and places for her antepasados, and art becomes a tool for understanding socio-political issues affecting communities, enabling collaboration toward representation and interdependence.
*social sculpture
Doris Salcedo’s concept of “social sculpture,” which explores the potential of art to shape society. Salcedo observes that placing a sculpture on a pedestal can evoke a sense of emptiness; a social sculpture, however, invites a broader conversation that includes “knowledge greater than oneself.” Such a sculpture becomes a meeting place for both the work and the viewer, allowing insights to unfold together. Salcedo posits that situating the invisible experiences of marginalized individuals in space creates a platform for life, reinforcing the connection between lived experiences and spatial realities.
