Melina Peña //

(to the border EE.UU/Mexico)

Action/ Interdisciplinary Artist from Tijuana, Mexico, raised on both sides of the border Mexico-U.S.A. Currently based in Barcelona, Spain. Melina Peña has been in an extensive search of her own body language training in Butoh, Experimental Dance, Body Landscape and Performance Art. She holds a Masters Degree in Independent Studies Program (PEI) by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona (MACBA). Post-graduate Studies on Sensory Language and The Poetics of Play, directed by El Teatro de los Sentidos/University of Girona, Spain. She doubled majored in Linguistics and World Arts & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In the past 15 years Melina has been consistently producing and exhibiting art, showing her work in places such as the Cerveira Biennale, PAN Pallazo Naples, Venice Biennale, Galerie Taïss and La Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. Artistic residencies and giving workshops in Germany, Mexico, Portugal, Estonia, Macedonia, England and Spain. Working with artists such as La Pochanostra, Shu Lea, Thierry Geoffrey and continuously collaborating with artists from different disciplines.

Melina´s work is committed to a live engagement with the audience, critically and playfully creating art. Her work is mostly process driven creating places that offer opportunities and experiences to reflect and negotiate among cultural, physical, and emotional involvement.

Currently her interests have mutated in the experimentation with other artistic means looking to generate stimulation and new forms of body language: Sound Art, Body Cartography, Installation and play through the Senses.

_in collaboration with

Nicasio Torres Melgar //

(Las Palmas)

Lives and works in Barcelona
Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona (2011) and Technical Engineer in Public Works from the University of Las Palmas (2002), his career takes place in Drawing and Fashion Illustration, combining his work as a teacher in several fashion schools in Barcelona.

His initial work is characterized by a representation of the ambiguous and blurred human figure. A figure that appears and disappears, shown with gaps and incomplete. Figures that initiate from the imaginary of current fashion, but in a new representation they transform to raise themes of strangeness and difference. A work that starts from a subjective and emotional view and evolves to a concern on social and political issues, such as the issue of the construction of representation and the practices of sexuality in our society.

Melina Peña in collaboration with Nicasio Torres Melgar HILUM

performance

Melina Peña photos Luz Verduzco

Hilum busca activar la memoria como vía hacia posibles respuestas donde nuestra cultura, historia, y antepasados se ponen al descubierto para desarticular las capas culturales que se nos han impuesto como forma de dominio y combatir el miedo. El recuperar el cuerpo y re-aprender/ re-diseñarlo poniendo en evidencia el saber fisiológico y orgánico que se ha usado para ejercer poder.