Joliz Dela Peña
Joliz Dela Peña, also known as JDP 2009, is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist from the Philippines currently based in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. Intimate connection to memories, identity, and immigration are recurring themes in Dela Peña’s practice. Through performance accompanied by installations, she endeavours to relive realities, explore their complexities, and translate invisible tensions into various visual and tactile qualities. In recent works, she attempts to translate fragmented memories from her personal life as a first-generation immigrant, alongside memories borrowed from others, to create a larger and more universal perspective for the audience to relate or connect to.
Our Souls Will Never Collide is a durational performance consisting of two bodies carrying out repetitive endurance movements that inherently challenge the subconscious on the temporalities of permanence. This performance piece is rooted in Dela Peña’s experience of losing her singularity amongst the plurality of her identity and the trauma it gradually engraved on her. Our Souls Will Never Collide explores how one’s experience can either leave a trace on another person or become an ephemeral endpoint – subsequently noting how overwhelming interpersonal experiences affect mental resilience and awareness of the physical body.