Yeni and Nan

"It's wonderful to get together again," said Nan, on her arrival from Venezuela, in reference to the fact that more than thirty years before these artists took different paths — Yeni had moved to Salamanca. The reunion also served to close a circle, since at the inauguration they presented a new performance, Fire, an element of strength, purity and transformation.

In April 2010, at Faría + Fábregas Galería, they presented a conceptualist sample consisting of a group of photographs, polaroids and videos that record the central performances and actions developed by the artists, titled Water, Salt, Land (Bodily Actions 1978/1986). The exhibition presents a selection of images of some of the artists' bodily events. Through the metaphor, their gestures of immersion in the water give an image and memory of the natural cycles of origin, and their slow movements refer both to the extent of the seas in which life arose and to the concentration in the containers of plastic that narrow their movement before reaching their exit to light. The damp layer of earth that surrounds their faces, and which dries out shows human fragility and at the same time that of the planet, its dangers of drought, infertility and extinction. Several of the pieces that make up the exhibits were recorded in U-matic format and edited by the artists with two Betamax and a homemade Moviola.

In 1983, in the Alternate Space of the GAN, they installed their video-performance, Transfiguración Elemento Tierra in the framework of the collective exhibition "Autorretrato – The artist as object-subject of art". In 1985, in the III National Salon of Young Artists of the MACC (an edition dedicated to installations), they participated with Man and Salt, for which they won first prize. The same installation (expanded) was represented at the La Rinconada Art Museum, Caracas, under the title Symbolism of Crystallization: Man-Salt II the last presentation made by Yeni and Nan in the framework of the exhibition, "Nature in Three Times".

Yen and Nan are best known for Developed Bodily Actions on the Cycles of Life, such as birth and transfiguration, and also on the elements of nature: water, earth and air. They created events that involved the natural landscape of Venezuela, as in "Salinas de Araya," one of their most emblematic works that also inspired the feature film by Margot Benecerraf. In the seventies and eighties, the duo collaborated with other creators of performances who worked on the rituals of Venezuelan national being, communication, passion and violence. Yeni and Nan, along with Antoinette Sosa, were the only women of those creators who were recognized at the time. They paid more attention to the inner life and the psycho-physical transformations of their anatomies, acting with self-centered and meditative intensity to slowly recreate the internal and external rhythms in their bodies. They were influenced by martial arts, psychology, theater, dance and cinema. In the early 1980s, their work "Integraciones en Agua" (Integrations in Water, 1980) and "Transfiguración Elemento Tierra" (Earth Element Transfiguration, 1983) challenged the conventions and traditional forms of art, using their own bodies and senses in action as avenues of aesthetic representation in the search for direct, sensory and participatory art.

In 1980, with the body as a central element, Yeni and Nan presented Presences and Art Artist (GAN), a metallic skeleton of a cube. They sought to employ the language of gesture and movement to express the unification of the internal space that has to break down to achieve the liberating experience of outer space. In 1981, with Integraciones en Agua, they participated in the XVI Bienal de São Paulo. The performance allowed them to assemble a visual, sound and tactile language. In the same year, in the Colloquium of Non-objectual Art organized in the Museum of Modern Art (Medellín, Colombia), they presented their Acción Divisoria del Espacio (Dividing Action of Space). In 1982 they performed Integraciones en Agua in the areas of the GAN and represented Venezuela in the Biennial of Young Artists of Paris (Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris) with contemplative Integrations and Water Integrations II.

Initially they based their propositions on three primary themes: the problem of personal identity, the limits of the individual, and share space in the tu-yo dialectic and that of the natural elements. The body and the approach to nature were central themes of their research and reflections in the search for vital keys of creation and life. They framed the self-designed and interiorist affiliation with the ecological calls of the 20th century avant-garde and with primitive symbolism of the natural world, producing moving conceptual and aesthetic proposals of both humanity and nature, "the body of one as the body of the world" (good/bad of the planet as good/bad of the being). The Venezuelan collectives of performance art were active between 1977-1986.

Yeni-Jennifer Hacksaw studied at the Cristobal Rojas School (1975-1977), the Central School of Art and the Chelsea School of Art in London (1977-1978), the School of Image in Cannes, France (1978-1980) and the Workshop of Experimental Cinema with the filmmaker Alfredo Anzola (Caracas, 1980) from 1979-1986.

María Luisa "Nan" González, studied at the Cristóbal Rojas School (1974-1978), studied photography in Cannes, France and cinema in Caracas (1979-1980).

Yeni and Nan are a team of Venezuelan artists. They were featured in exhibitions across the United States and Latin America. Yeni-Jennifer Hacksaw (born 1948), developed a creative partnership with Nan González (María Luisa González, born 1956), under the name Yeni and Nan, carried out artistic performances and multimedia installations, which identified with 1980s conceptual art.