Vascular Caverns Special Performance Set for 707 Penn Gallery

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announces a special performance at 707 Penn Gallery during the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival. Paper-cutting sculptor Gianna Paniagua burns through her hand-cut paper installation to create a final, evolved artwork.

The interactive hand-cut paper installation Vascular Caverns depicts abstracted, anatomical imagery, using only hand-cut paper to surround the viewer in a repetitious environment. During a six-hour long performance, the artist acts as a catalyst as she cuts and burns through paper to manipulate the installation.

The artist's work concerns dualities of the human body: strength vs. fragility, growth vs. decay, and unique vs. patterned. In her paper cutouts, she emphasizes the physical, delicate nature of the body as well as its ability to heal. Paniagua sources her pattern imagery from histology slides, anatomical illustrations, and cellular growth.

"As the recipient of a heart transplant, my own experiences push me to view the body as a collection of patterns that are extremely fragile," says Paniagua. "My medical situation requires lifelong treatment, which incorporates daily routines that allow for proper body functioning. Mimicking my own life, I embed ritual and repetition into my practice by performing meditative paper-cutting."

Paniagua's interaction with the paper began as a way to escape the physical stressors and frustrations that were associated with her health, placing focus on creating patterns on paper that take shape and grow into the space.?

707 Penn Gallery 707 Penn Gallery is a project of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. The gallery is located at 707 Penn Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh's Cultural District. Gallery Hours: Wed. & Thurs. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. The gallery is free and open to the public. For more information about all gallery exhibitions featured in the Cultural District, please visit TrustArts.org.

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has overseen one of Pittsburgh's most historic transformations: turning a seedy red-light district into a magnet destination for arts lovers, residents, visitors, and business owners. Founded in 1984, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is the cultural and economic revitalization of a 14-block arts and entertainment/residential neighborhood called the Cultural District. The District is one of the country's largest landmasses curated by a single nonprofit arts organization. A major catalytic force in the city, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a unique model of how public-private partnerships can reinvent a city with authenticity, innovation and creativity. Using the arts as an economic catalyst, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has holistically created a world-renowned Cultural District that is revitalizing the city, improving the regional economy and enhancing Pittsburgh's quality of life. Thanks to the support of foundations, corporations, government agencies and thousands of private citizens, the Cultural Trust stands as a national model of urban redevelopment through the arts. For more information, visit TrustArts.org.