Gómez-Peña pushes borders of comfort
By Hadley Harrison Contributor
The Mexican-born performance artist Guillerm
o Gómez-Peña emigrated from Mexico City to the U.S. in 1978. He works in many mediums, including performance art, radio, installation art and experimental video performances.
Peña is the founding member of the performance troupe Pocha Nostra, which encourages collaboration between artists in multiple countries and hosts an international performance workshop twice a year.
In the discussion on Friday with Pocha Nostra troupe member, Michéle Ceballos, Peña stated that his art is meant to “resonate with a local consciousness as well as a global one.”
Ceballos added that “Our art, and performance art in general, is about working against what is easy. It’s about getting out of your zone of comfort.”
One of Peña’s most famous pieces was a collaboration with artist Coco Fusco called “Couple in a Cage,” in which the couple was exhibited as a newly discovered tribe of “savages” from a mystery island. The performance was meant as a satire about the European “discovery” of the Western World, but many viewers actually believed that the exhibition was real.
