Yeni y Nan (Venezuela, 1977–1986)

The Venezuelan artist duo Yeni & Nan (Jennifer Hackshaw, b. 1948, and María Luisa González, b. 1956) is renowned for pioneering performances and site-specific actions that intertwine the human body with elemental nature. Active from 1977 to 1986, their practice combined performance art, land art, photography, and video in experimental ways. Their works explore themes of the body’s coexistence with natural environments, the cycles of life (birth, transformation, decay), and the limits of physical space. Often working in remote or outdoor sites, Yeni & Nan integrated water, earth, air, and salt into symbolic actions where these elements would co-produce the phenomenal qualities of the ensuing, highly original and ritual-like artworks.

Cuerpo y línea and Tensiones reflexivas (1977)

Yeni & Nan’s first collaborative pieces were created while they were art students in London in the late 1970s. In Cuerpo y línea (“Body and Line,” 1977), performed at the Chelsea College of Arts, the artists used a tennis court as their canvas. The action consisted of aligning and superimposing their bodies onto the white lines of the court, creating geometric interactions between the human figure and the demarcated space. This performance was documented in a series of Polaroid photographs that capture Yeni’s body sheathed in black clothing against the court’s linear grid. The stark visual of a dark human form bisected by a bright line illustrated the duo’s early interest in “tensions between the body and space”, effectively turning a recreational site into a conceptual framework for body art.

That same year, Yeni & Nan produced Tensiones reflexivas (“Reflexive Tensions,” 1977), a series of experimental actions that further internalized the idea of the “line.” In this work, the lines migrated onto the body itself: the artists wrapped parts of their own bodies (hands, face, torso) with string, then photographed these constricted poses. The resulting images show hands bound tightly by cords and a face partly encircled by taut lines, staging a visceral struggle. Some of the strings extend beyond the body in the photographs, creating new geometries in space and a visual metaphor for invisible constraints made visible. Tensiones reflexivas was conceived as a direct precursor to their subsequent performance Nacimiento, that translated abstract ideas of boundary and tension onto flesh. In the words of one commentator, these intimate studies “overflow the image, creating a new spatial geometry that reframes parts of the body,” foreshadowing the total envelopment that would occur in Nacimiento. Though modest in scale, the 1977 works established the duo’s fundamental approach that placed the body as both subject and object, and the site – whether a tennis court or the surface of the skin – as an active element in the artwork.

Yeni y Nan, Cuerpo y línea and Tensiones reflexivas, 1977. String and Polaroids on canvas, 68.6 × 48.9 cm. Courtesy of the artists and Henrique Faria, New York.

Nacimiento I and Nacimiento II (1979)

Yeni y Nan, Nacimiento I, 1979, gelatin silver prints, 18 photographs, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artists and Henrique Faria, New York.

Returning to Caracas after their studies, Yeni & Nan debuted Nacimiento I and Nacimiento II (“Birth I and II”) in June 1979 at the Central University of Venezuela. These twin performances are considered a landmark in Venezuelan performance art for their powerful evocation of birth as an existential and spiritual rite. In Nacimiento, each artist enacted their own symbolic “birth” in a two-part live installation. Both women were dressed in plain white, with lengths of white bed sheets and spools of string as their primary props. In Nacimiento I, Nan slowly and methodically bound Yeni within a cocoon of cloth and string, wrapping her body upright against a hanging sheet until Yeni was almost entirely encased, a mummified figure symbolizing a gestational state. Yeni then had to fight her way free of these bindings, emerging from the constriction through gradual, determined movements. Nacimiento II reversed the roles, with Yeni binding and Nan struggling for release, each artist thus experiencing both sides of the process. The title “Birth I and II” did not imply a sequence but rather two distinct, parallel interpretations of the birth theme, one by each artist. Despite the minimalism of materials, Nacimiento delivered intense emotional and symbolic resonance. The slow, deliberate pacing accompanied by sounds of breathing and muffled cries gave the impression of a primal struggle, a rite of passage in which each artist shed symbolic restraints (the “chaotic sewing” of strings) to reclaim autonomy of body and spirit. As filmmaker Margarita D’Amico observed of the two performers: “Yeni creates shapes and breaks her ties through actions of pure inner energy; Nan frees herself through profoundly violent gestures and sounds,” underscoring the different expressive temperaments each brought to the shared theme.

Yeni y Nan, Nacimiento II , 1979/2018. Digital color C-prints from Ektachrome slides. Seven photographs, 27 1/2 x 18 in. (70 x 45.65 cm). Edition AP of 5 + 2 AP.

Nacimiento underwent multiple iterations and re-stagings, reflecting Yeni & Nan’s process-based practice. They performed it in non-theatrical settings (including an outdoor garden, where lush foliage formed a living backdrop to the white-bound bodies) and later in formal gallery spaces. In each context the work took on a slightly different aura, ranging from vibrant and life-affirming in the garden version to ghostly and phantasmagorical in the gallery with its white walls and spectral lighting. Photographs and video were integral to Nacimiento, not merely as documentation but as extensions of the work. Indeed, for a 1979 exhibition in Buenos Aires, Yeni & Nan presented Nacimiento as an installation of Polaroid sequences and dual-channel videos alongside a live performance. This multiform presentation allowed the concept of birth to be experienced through both immediate action and mediated images. It also demonstrated how central photography and video were to Yeni & Nan’s strategy of preserving their ephemeral art. The performance’s multiple lives were carried forward through images that could speak to viewers long after the live act was over. Nacimiento thus embodies the duo’s synthesis of raw bodily experience with conceptual rigor, and stands as a touchstone for feminist performance art in Latin America, in dialogue with contemporaneous works by artists like Lygia Clark and Maria Evelia Marmolejo that likewise used the metaphor of birth to signal transformation and empowerment.

Integraciones en agua (1981)

Yeni y Nan, Integrations in Water I. 1981. Performance at the Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas.Courtesy of the artists and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

By the early 1980s, Yeni & Nan shifted their focus outward to engage directly with natural elements. Integraciones en agua (“Integrations in Water,” 1981) is a performance that took their birth symbolism into a literal aquatic environment. This piece was first realized at the Galería de Arte Nacional in Caracas in 1981 as a live action and installation, and subsequently re-staged at international venues (notably the XVI São Paulo Biennial in 1981 and the Paris Biennale in 1982). As Nan González later explained in conversation with MoMA magazine, the artists conceived Integraciones en agua by “looking for an analogy with birth, with the amniotic, with what water symbolizes for human beings… to represent a birth, a new beginning.”

The core of Integraciones en agua was a dramatic submersion of both artists together inside a huge transparent plastic bag filled with water, analogous to a shared womb. The performance began with ritualistic preparation. Yeni and Nan, wearing form-fitting black bodysuits, were seen carefully suspending dozens of small water-filled plastic bags from the ceiling, each bag containing a Polaroid photograph of the artists’ faces. These hanging water bags, gently swaying and catching the light, created an eerie atmosphere reminiscent of floating mnemonic “membranes” that the performers would later rupture. Indeed, at a certain point in the performance, the artists moved among the dangling bags and pierced them, causing water to stream out and splatter the floor until the Polaroid portraits were literally “washed out”. This action symbolically dissolved the old self, clearing the way for rebirth.

Yeni y Nan, Integrations in Water, 1982. U-matic VHS transferred to digital video, 6:54 min. Edition of 5 + 2 AP. Performance at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional), Caracas, 1982.

After this prelude, Yeni and Nan entered the central plastic capsule of water. The audience watched, transfixed, as the two women struggled within the confines of the giant bag, their movements visible through the distorting lens of water and flickering vinyl. The gallery filled with the muffled sound of water sloshing and the sight of arms and legs pushing against the transparent walls of the bag. The artists’ deliberate difficulty in breathing and moving conveyed a sense of urgency, almost as a life-and-death effort to emerge. At one climactic moment, they then began to tear away their external black bodysuits underwater, revealing that they wore white clothing underneath. This dramatic transformation from black to white heightened the piece’s allegorical power. Finally, with a burst of collective energy, Yeni and Nan managed to rip open the amniotic bag and spill out, breaking free amid splashing water.

Yeni & Nan. Integrations in Water. 1981. Color instant prints (Polaroid), 11 × 55 9/16" (28 × 141.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Mauro Herlitzka. © 2022 Yeni & Nan

The entire process was recorded on video and complemented by photographic stills (including the polaroids) displayed nearby, underscoring how performance and documentation determined and surveyed the other's existence. In fact, Integraciones en agua was conceived as an integrated multimedia experience. During the live events in Caracas and São Paulo, the suspended Polaroids in little water bags were interactive elements that viewers could touch and even open, releasing water as a participatory metaphor for the breaking of waters in childbirth. Some audience members left with the Polaroids as keepsakes, carrying away fragments of the performance that worked as a conceptual extension of the work into the public’s hands. Integraciones en agua stands as one of their most celebrated works, encapsulating the duo’s intermeshing of elemental symbolism, endurance art, and intermedia installation that gave body to a metaphor.

Integraciones contemplativas (1981)

Yeni y Nan, Contemplative Integrations I. 1981. Performance at the Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas.

Yeni & Nan often revisited and reworked their ideas in serial form. Following the initial success of Integraciones en agua, they developed a variation titled Integraciones contemplativas (“Contemplative Integrations,” 1981) later that same year. This piece can be seen as a conceptual twin to the original water performance, with an integral alteration: instead of both artists occupying one shared womb-like space, Integraciones contemplativas featured each artist sealed in their own separate transparent water container. In effect, the single birth of Integraciones en agua was split into two parallel, simultaneously performed “births.” Yeni & Nan debuted Integraciones contemplativas at the Galería de Arte Nacional in Caracas in late 1981 and subsequently presented it at the XVI Bienal de São Paulo, also in 1981. While the fundamental motif remained, the contemplative version invited a more comparative, perhaps introspective, experience. Viewers could observe the two women in separate transparent sacks placed side by side, each undergoing her personal struggle to be “reborn.” This dual configuration highlighted subtle differences in their movements and emotional expressions, reinforcing the notion (also present in Nacimiento I & II) that the experience of birth/transformation is deeply individual even when shared in theme. The term “contemplative” suggests that this iteration had a somewhat more meditative character. Indeed, accounts recall that the artists incorporated moments of stillness amid the struggle, allowing the audience to quietly contemplate the image of the female body floating in the vinyl sack. The visual symmetry of two translucent cocoons may also have evoked a mirror image. Notably, when Integraciones en agua was later reprised at the Paris Biennale in 1982, the duo returned to the single-bag format.

Yeni y Nan, Contemplative Integrations. 1982. Polaroid SX70. Installed at a performance at the Biennale de Paris, Grand Palais on October 1, 1982.

Autológica: Agua and Autológica: Aire (1982)

In 1982, Yeni & Nan recorded two site-specific video performances that explored the interplay of water and air. These works, Autológica: Agua (“Autologic: Water”) and Autológica: Aire (“Autologic: Air”), were conceived as two halves of a single project. Each video features one of the artists engaged in a stylized interaction with a natural environment, framed by a simple cubic geometric structure. When exhibited together as a synchronized two-channel installation (sometimes under the combined title Autologous Between Water and Air), the pieces present a compelling contrast of aquatic and terrestrial movement.

In Autológica: Agua, Nan is filmed submerged in shallow water while enclosed within a lightweight metal cube structure. The metal frame is an open cube, cage-like, that doesn’t confine her physically but rather defines the spatial boundaries of her performance. Within this cube, set in the swimming pool at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Nan undertakes a series of slow, deliberate motions, stretching her arms and legs outwards to touch the cube’s edges, then contracting her body inward, and even pushing herself upward through the water’s buoyancy. At times she rises partially out of the water within the cube, only to sink back down in what resembles a ritualistic dance. The water provides resistance and fluidity, rendering her movements graceful and dreamlike. The visual of a human figure floating inside a transparent cube evokes a scientific experiment or a performance of self-containment, yet Nan’s focus and measured gestures imbue it with meditative calm.

Yeni y Nan, Autológica: Agua + Aire, 1982. U-matic VHS transferred to digital video. Autológica: Agua, 14:24 min; Autológica: Aire, 5:34 min. Two-channel, color, sound. Edition of 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artists and Henrique Faria, New York.

The companion piece, Autológica: Aire, features Yeni performing with the same metal cube structure at the edge of Venezuela’s Caribbean shore while half immersed in water and half open to the air. Waves continually lap against the cube. Yeni uses the structure as a prop for movement. She grips its bars and leans out, steps through its open sides, and allows her body to sway in concert with the rhythm of the surf. As waves crash into the cube and recede moments later, they leave thin lines of foam that trace the structure’s outline on the sand. Yeni’s performance thus literally inscribes the meeting of water and air. Her body, sometimes buffeted by wind and spray, maintains a poised dialogue with the elements, as if affirming human presence within the immense cycles of nature. The term “Autológica” itself hints at self-reference or self-knowledge (“auto” as self, “logica” as logic or study). Indeed, these works can be interpreted as studies of the self in elemental contexts, seeking to reveal the body’s internal “logic” through its interaction with water and air. By placing themselves inside a minimalist geometric frame in natural settings, Yeni & Nan drew attention to the human attempt to impose order on the organic environment, even as they demonstrated the body’s ultimate submission to natural forces. When exhibited as a dual-channel video installation, Autológica: Agua + Aire juxtaposed the two scenarios. One screen shows the submerged, introspective dance of Nan in water, the other depicts Yeni’s windswept movements by the ocean.

Simbolismo de cristalización – Araya (1983–86) and Hombre Sal – Araya (1984–86)

In the mid-1980s, Yeni & Nan embarked on their most ambitious site-specific project, one that took them far from galleries and deep into one of Venezuela’s most remote landscapes, the salt flats of Araya. This project, known as Simbolismo de cristalización – Araya (“Symbolism of Crystallization – Araya,” 1983–1986), was a prolonged artistic intervention in the Salinas de Araya, a historic salt mine peninsula on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Over multiple expeditions between 1983 and 1984, the duo lived and worked on-site at Araya, within the striking environment of white salt mounds, pink lagoons, and under the relentless sun. The result was a series of performances and photographic works that constitute Yeni & Nan’s final collaborative opus. Simbolismo de cristalización enacted the elemental symbolism of their previous performances as land art and on an unprecedented, monumental scale.

Yeni y Nan, Simbolismo de la cristalizacion – Araya, 1984/2013. C-prints from Ektachrome slides. 8 photographs, 13 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. (33.66 x 49.53 cm.). Edition of 5 + 2 AP.

At Araya, Yeni & Nan performed a series of actions in front of the camera, deliberately allowing the natural processes of salt crystallization, evaporation, and light to determine the work's form . One important strategy was

their use of the local infrastructure. They obtained wooden salt pans (known as bateas) used by salt laborers to evaporate seawater, and repurposed them as artistic tools. By submerging these large rectangular pans in brine and then partially lifting them out, the artists created planar surfaces on which salt would encrust over time, forming geometric crusts of pure white salt. These human-made rectangles emerging from the landscape introduced a minimalist visual order that dialogued with the natural, crystalline growth, which yielded a continuation of Yeni & Nan’s recurring motif of imposing geometry onto organic terrain.

Yeni y Nan, Simbolismo de la cristalizacion – Araya, 1984-1986/2013. C-prints from ektachrome slides 13 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. each. Ed. of 5 + 2 AP.

Yeni y Nan, Simbolismo de la cristalizacion – Araya, 1983. Umatic VHS transferred to digital video, color, sound. 7:00 min. Edition of 5 + 2 AP.

Amidst this otherworldly setting, Yeni & Nan inserted their own bodies as a sort of living sculpture. They often donned vivid red bodysuits during the Araya performances, a deliberate choice to create a stark chromatic contrast against the blinding white expanses of salt. In other sequences, for the first time in their work, they appeared completely nude in the landscape. Whether clothed in red or unclothed and nearly blending into the color of salt, the presence of the human figure is arresting in these images.Many of the photographs from Simbolismo de cristalización depict the artists engaging physically with the terrain, climbing the conical salt piles, striding across mirrored salt pools, or standing face-to-face on the desert-like flats. Nan later recounted that scaling the largest salt hills (which could reach 50 meters tall) felt “like climbing a 17-story building,” often requiring them to carve footholds into the salt to ascend. This arduous process of conquering the landscape with their bodies became an integral part of the performance and its meaning-making.The title “Symbolism of Crystallization,” then, hints at multiple layers of meaning. On one hand, it refers to the salt crystals forming around everything, including around the artists themselves, who at times remained still long enough to have salt dry on their skin and clothing. On another level, crystallization connotes the capturing or preserving of a moment in time through the photographic image. Indeed, the photograph was the primary end-product of the Araya performances. Simbolismo de cristalización – Araya ultimately is the sum of its photographs and videos, as a performance that took place with no live spectators. Yeni & Nan consciously composed the scenes for the camera, staging their bodies and the salt pans with an eye to formal balance and visual impact. Art historian Fabiola Velasco observed that every element in these images appears “thought out for the photographic support: the balanced composition, the use of red to stand out in the immensity of the white salt flat, the tensions between the bodies and the vanishing points, and attention to changes of scale and framing”.

Yeni y Nan, Hombre Sal - Araya, 1984-1986/2013. C-prints from ektachrome slides. 3 photographs 13 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. (34 x 50 cm.) each. 3 photographs 19 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. (50 x 34 cm.) each. Ed. of 5 + 2 AP.

Within the Araya project, Yeni & Nan developed sub-series focusing on specific motifs. One notable series is Hombre Sal – Araya (“Salt Man – Araya,” 1984–86), which emerged from the same period. Despite its title, Hombre Sal did not literally involve a male performer; rather, it can be understood as an exploration of human-as-mineral iconography within the Araya cycle. In practice, the Hombre Sal photographs highlight sculptural human forms in salt, sometimes featuring the artists wearing the red bodysuits in dynamic poses against the pale landscape. Presented in Caracas in 1985 alongside the broader Simbolismo de cristalización series, Hombre Sal and its companion works were celebrated for their breathtaking beauty and conceptual clarity. When Yeni & Nan exhibited the Araya works at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas in 1985, they earned the Venezuelan National Prize for Young Artists for that year. The imagery of two women naked in the middle of the white salt desert, sometimes standing back-to-back like mirror images, other times confronting each other across the expanse, has since become iconic in Venezuelan art.

By the end of the Araya project in 1986, Yeni & Nan had effectively completed their collaborative journey.

Bibliography

• Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC). Yeni y Nan. Dualidad, 1977–1986. Seville: CAAC, 2019. (Exhibition catalogue.)

• CITRU (INBA). Performance and Art-Action in Latin America. Mexico City: Centro Nacional de Investigación Teatral Rodolfo Usigli, n.d.

• Cullen, Deborah, ed. Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960–2000. New York: El Museo del Barrio, 2008.

• Fusco, Coco, ed. Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

• Galería de Arte Nacional (CONAC). Yeni y Nan. Eventos de lenguaje de acción. Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional/CONAC, 1982. (Exhibition catalogue.)

• Henrique Faria Fine Art. “Yeni & Nan: Nacimiento.” Exhibition essay. New York, 2018.

• Pedreáñez, Inger. “Los elementos de Nan González.” Revista Estilo, February 16, 2020.

• Shtromberg, Elena, and Glenn Phillips, eds. Encounters in Video Art in Latin America. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2023.

• Turner, Madeline Murphy, and Elise Chagas. “Perception That Opens Like a Memory: An Interview with Yeni & Nan.” MoMA Magazine, April 28, 2022.

• Velasco Garípoli, Fabiola. “El cuerpo expandido: fotografía y performance en la obra de Yeni y Nan (1977–1986).” Trópico Absoluto, April 26, 2022.