What’s your business name and what do you do?
verónica a. pérez and I am an artist, social and cultural worker. I create artwork from personal and community perspectives through building empathy and uplifting identities, using personal materials such as hair. The personal work is about a need to understand and remember the Puerto Rican identity through looking at my fathers’ forgotten and erased history. Colonization and US imperialism has ravaged not only the island but also the people and bodies. I use amorphous, drippy, hairy, and glittery materials to talk about this dark history but there are bright points throughout the sculptures that allude to this different way of being. Seeds need darkness to grow and I have been thinking about that a lot. Additionally, through my project braiding circles I use these workshops to engender empathy and understanding. At these workshops, I invite participants to braid banana fiber based hair and have open conversations about hair and how that has shaped their identity. I do this through explaining the project to people and asking them some questions about their hair such as ‘do you remember the last time someone brushed your hair’, and ‘do you have a memory of a favorite hairstyle and why?’ Then I extend the invitation further to the BIPOC participants only recording an oral hair story for inclusion in upcoming shows and events. The purpose of recording these stories is to preserve history and to show how BIPOC people have been systemically marginalized and oppressed through something as minute as hair. I should also add the caveat that I don’t think hair is minute - which is why I focus on using hair as a focal point in the work.
How did you learn your craft?
I learned my craft thru trial and error. There’s a lot of what I do that’s learning textile or sculpting techniques - but then turning them on their heads to create and make something completely new.
What do you enjoy most about what you do?
I love working alongside community members to find out their stories and personal perspectives. I enjoy how through artmaking and conversation - there is a place that is opened up for people to access lost memories and builds trust so that we can talk about these issues of oppression and how we can be there for each other to lift each other up.
What do you enjoy least?
Grant writing! There are so many fantastic artists out there and limited funds. Grant writing is arduous and take a lot of unpaid work. I really hope that this changes one day and people start to see that artists are contributing members of society through the beauty and cultural inquiries that they make for society.
What’s one thing you wish people knew about your work?
The labor that goes into each piece.
What’s one artist you look up to?
Doris Salcedo. She is a Colombian artist who creates monumental structures and statements about the horrors her people have faced through the oppressive government. She shows compassion and understanding through these visual pieces and creates spaces for learning and understanding through what she calls social sculpture which is the possibility of giving form to society through art. Salcedo discusses the vacant feeling of placing a sculpture on a pedestal for the sake of its sheer form. A social sculpture opens the conversation to include “knowledge greater than oneself.” The sculpture becomes the meeting place for the work and the viewer to unfold. Salcedo says, “To place the invisible experience of marginal people in space is to find a place to write, to develop life. So there is no way of isolating living experiences from spatial experiences.”
What do you do when you’re not creating?
I love hanging out with my daughter, aimlessly scrolling TikTok, walking my dog Pryor, and watching horror movies.
Night owl or early bird?
Night owl. It feels like the world is mine and anything’s possible while people slumber.
What's your favorite place in Maine?
Crescent beach!