Jillian Peña
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: DANCE
I am a dance and video artist based in Brooklyn. My work is primarily concerned with confusion and desire between self and other, focusing on the most complicated relationship we all have: that of the self to the self. I make dances that sometimes include people dancing, sometimes include you dancing, and sometimes hope that dance can exist without dance, by being moved by something.
I am inspired by psychoanalysis, queer theory, pop media, and spirituality. I have been presented internationally, including at Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen in New York, Akademie der Kunste Berlin, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, International Festival of Contemporary Art Slovenia, and Mix Brazil Sao Paulo. I have an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I was a fellowship recipient, and a BA from Hollins University. I am a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar and a Practice-based MPhil/PhD candidate in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London. My video work is distributed by Video Data Bank. I was a 2009 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2009 DanceWeb Fellow at Impulstanz in Vienna, a 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Archauz in Århus, Denmark, and a 2011 Artist-in-Residence at the National Dance Center of Bucharest, Romania.
Project Description
I make dances that sometimes include people dancing, sometimes include you dancing, and sometimes hope that dance can exist without dancing, but instead by feeling moved in some way — physically, emotionally, or psychologically. I am a dancer, but I do not dance. Dance is the language I speak. It is inside me and all over me. My work focuses on the most complicated relationship we all have: that of the self to itself. This exists in the work through the relationships between the performers, the relationship of the audience to the work, and the relationship the is stimulated in an audience member to their self.
