For Angelo Sapienza, a.k.a. VoVera, movement comes from within. A performance artist, poet, break dancer, and self-portrait photographer from Tucson, Arizona, Sapienza has performed with major dance companies and filled multiple roles as a choreographer and instructor. His work addresses social inequities and substance addiction while transcribing raw moments from personal experience. His latest project involves combining words and images; superimposing poetry over photographs of his body in motion to create a new form of “2-D multi-media performance.”
By probing some of his darker moments, Sapienza hopes to inspire others to follow a higher path. A multi-faceted artist who had trouble fitting in as a teenager, he explored the underground Hip Hop scene and considered himself a “confident outcast.” As his style evolved from Bboy (break dancer) to experimental street dancer, he searched for intersections between movement, poetry, and photography. Through his pursuit of multiple paths, Sapienza strove to share his story in ways that would make a positive impact on others while developing a unique style and voice.
His technique of capturing scenes from movement-based performances as self-portraits, and combining them with reflections in verse, gives his work a layered effect as he navigates a journey from despair to personal alignment. As painful as it is to share insights into personal vulnerability and doubt, Sapienza uses his body as a canvas to create a “deeper inquiry through the unique lens of movement art” that reveals insights into the human condition and celebrates the power of transformation.
Angelo Sapienza – Table of Contents
Angelo Sapienza — Artist Statement
My art must always come from inside of me, a place of inspiration. It must be intended to inspire the observers in some way, and it must able to be received in a way that may inspire. I have observed my ideas, movement practices, and mediums of art as they slide around in rotation. I build upon each platform at little bit at a time, and my constant is movement art. Movement arts have the capacity to be a powerful instigator of sociological change. Providing a special medium for understanding underlooked, overlooked, and unknown aspects of the human experience, they can make the unseen appear, the unheard be heard, and the unknown be contemplated. They transcribe experiences, ideas, feelings and the abstract into an artistic means. Society picks up on this stimulus, digests and categorizes the information, then employs the information that resonates with any part of its members' psyches.
Movement arts explore conditions of the human experience through their unique lens, while investigating how they exist, how they could be and how they should be. The most impactful dance adheres to members of society, influencing their morals, values, actions, understandings of, and perspectives towards these conditions.
As a movement artist I create through a long-scoped lens of progression, from the learning and training processes of movement, to the creation process of deeper inquiry that develops something new. In creating, I look not just for the end effect, but also for the means to evolve to that end, particularly how the journey may transpire. I am perpetually sharpening my pencil, exploring new ways to tell a story with my body in space and in moments captured. I am constantly altering my body canvas, and looking for new ways to reframe perspective. In recent years I have developed interests in creating with the camera, natural and artificial architecture, and light technologies. I have been creating 2-D works that merge the word of poetry and the sight of my self-photography.
While using the above mentioned to augment the stories told by moments of movement and stillness, I am most passionate for movement language synthesis and performance. In the form of my current product definition statement: I create distinct performance-based and mixed-medium works that heighten the viewer’s experience and push the limits of what is possible. By building unique and exclusive platforms, I integrate the human condition through the presentation where the work can explore, thrive and evolve.
2021 Grant Submission Works
Poem superimposed on self-portrait photo
Printed onto 16"x20" unframed, stretched canvas
2-D multimedia work that activates the power of I AM, and affirms the alignment one has to one's chosen path.
Poem superimposed on self-portrait photo
Printed onto 16"x20" unframed, stretched canvas
2-D multimedia work that activates the power of I AM, and affirms the deprivation of one's success, and forfeiture of one's existence.
Poem superimposed on self-portrait photo
Printed on 16"x20" unframed, stretched canvas
2-D multimedia work about connecting to and settling into one's chosen life path.
Poem superimposed on self-portrait photo
Printed onto 16"x20" unframed, stretched canvas
2-D multimedia work about a health-centric lifestyle that clashes with a darker lifestyle of addiction.
Poem superimposed on self-portrait photo.
Printed onto 16"x20" unframed, stretched canvas
2-D multimedia work about being lost and disconnected from one's life path.
Angelo Sapienza - Bio
Vo Vera has spent the last two decades identifying as a Bboy & dancer, having received formal dance training from Arizona State University. He has choreographed for and performed with Jacob Jonas The Company, EPIK Dance Company, and The Sacred G’s. As an educator he has served as Faculty Associate at ASU, and as Faculty Adjunct at five Maricopa Community Colleges. Instructor, choreographer, competitor, performance artist, poet and photographer, his pursuit of so many avenues speak to the devotion of his creative engine. The maturity of which cross-pollinated into a fresh presentation of dynamic, intentional multidisciplinary performance and multimedia art.
Angelo on the Web And Social Media
Here is where to find out more about Angelo Sapienza on the web and social media:
About the Artist of the Day Series
All artworks have been published with permission of the artist. Our "Artist of the Day" series is a regular feature highlighting artworks from the 100's of grant applications we receive. The "Not Real Art Grant" is an annual award designed to empower the careers of contemporary artists, and this is one way we honor all entries we receive. Find out more about the grant program here.