The Death of The Artist

Last updated
The Death of The Artist
El artista Abel Azcona, retratado en el Circulo de Bellas Artes de Madrid.jpg
Artist Abel Azcona
Year2018
Medium Performance Art
Location Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain

The Death of The Artist is a conceptual and performative work of critical content by artist Abel Azcona. The artwork was both a continuation of his earlier works and closure of the series, being performed in 2018 in the lobby of the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. His previous works had caused Azcona to receive threats, persecution, and acts of violence. By letter, the artist invited the organizations, groups, and entities that had threatened his life to the installation, where a loaded firearm was offered and Azcona stood exposed on a raised platform. [1]

Contents

Persecution and criticism

Abel Azcona has been involved in several controversies and legal proceedings. In his first actions in the streets of Pamplona in 2005, Azcona was arrested several times. [2] Later, during his self-confinement in the work Dark Room, public opinion was against the harshness of his self-imposed deprivation of liberty and food, generating controversy. [3] The work was stopped after 42 days and the artist was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. [4] Similarly, during the installation where another artist stayed continually in a garbage container at the Lyon Biennale, people spoke in favor of ending the work. [5]

The works of Azcona with explicit sexuality such as Empathy and Prostitution or Las Horas, were criticized when shown in cities such as Houston and Mexico City, cities where at the time of the exposition antisodomy or anti-sexual diversity laws existed. [6] In 2012, he was threatened and persecuted for his work Eating a Koran, in which he ingested a copy of the Koran at University of the Arts in Berlin. [7] During the years 2014 and 2015 he was arrested and his exhibitions in the United States were canceled. In 2014, the first Utero performance in Houston was criticized in the media for "exceeding the limits of integrity and endangering his own life". [8] During a Miami exhibition in 2015, twelve children walked into a performance inside the art gallery with firearms in their hands, which was a critique of the laws and the permissibility of weapons in the United States. The exhibition was canceled and Azcona had to return to Europe. A few months later he performed a new work in Chicago, where he denounced the political and ideological nature of Donald Trump. The artistic action was considered "heroic" by the American Huffington Post . [9] In 2015, he was denounced by the Carlist Traditionalist Union for performing the work Buried inside the Monument to the Fallen in Pamplona. The work demanded memory and reparation for the victims of the Republican side. Its exhibition inside the Monument, built in order to exalt Franco, Mola, and Sanjurjo, was considered offensive by far-right conservatives [ who? ]. [10]

Azcona's work denounces child abuse and has been persecuted and denounced for being critical of the Church in works such as The Shadow or Amen or The Pederasty . [11] The latter was sued three times before the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra for desecration and blasphemy by the Archbishopric of Pamplona and Tudela, who are representatives of the Catholic Church in the north of Spain. [12] [13] The second one, by the Delegation of the Government in Navarra, controlled by the Popular Party at the time, and the third one by The Asociación Española de Abogados Cristianos (Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers), who also made criminal complaints against Azcona. [14] The lawsuits were won by Azcona, [15] [16] however the group took the complaint to the Supreme Court. Whilst awaiting the case being heard by the Supreme Court, the Association of Christian Lawyers, in this instance acting alone, started an action against Spain in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for not condemning Azcona, [17] [18] and according to them, to protect him. Each time the work was shown, the complaint was re-formulated, so Azcona was cited in the Court of Justice of Palma de Mallorca and in the High Court of Justice of Catalonia in Barcelona. After five years of judicial proceedings for critical works against the Catholic Church and more specifically, with pedophilia, Azcona declared his " disobedience" in relation to charges, and the complainants included obstruction of justice in their complaints. [19] [20] [21]

In 2016, Azcona was denounced for exalting terrorism. [22] [23] In his exhibition Still Life, [24] Azcona recreated, in the form of sculptures, performance and hyper-realistic installations, current and historical situations of violence in diverse themes such as historical memory, terrorism and conflict. [25] Two years later, in 2018, he was denounced by the Francisco Franco National Foundation for exposing in one of his works a detonation report, signed by an architect, of the Monument of the Valley of the Fallen. [26] He was also criticized by the State of Israel for the piece The Shame, where the artist installed fragments of the Berlin Wall along the West Bank Wall. [27] The same year he represented Spain at the Asia Art Biennial in Dhaka. Azcona installed wooden chairs in the Pavilion with distressed children from the streets of Dhaka. His performance was interrupted by the protests of the organization and attendees.

Manifest

In addition, the Círculo de Bellas Artes presented a complete reading of The artist's presumption as a radical and disobedient subject, both in life and in death manifesto. [28] [29]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Performance art</span> Artwork created through actions of an artist or other participants

Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Autovía A-21</span> Road in Spain

The Spanish Autovía A-21 is a highway between Jaca, in Aragon, and Iruña/Pamplona, in Navarre which is partially open and partially under construction.

Basque National Liberation Movement prisoners are all those people who have been imprisoned, placed on remand, or otherwise kept in custody due to their illegal activity in support of the Basque National Liberation Movement.

Corruption in Navarre refers to a quick succession of corruption scandals which have come to light since 2012 referring to the UPN's tenure in office. However, amidst heated political confrontation since the late days of Franco's dictatorship, the first corruption cases erupted early on, going back to the first government cabinets formed after the establishment of Navarre's "Betterment".

The term Basque derbies refers to the various local derbies between the football teams based in the Basque Country, Spain. This can also include the province of Navarre outside of the autonomous community. It specifically refers to individual matches between the teams, but can also be used to describe the general ongoing rivalry between the clubs and fans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amaia (singer)</span> Spanish singer and pianist (born 1999)

Amaia Romero Arbizu, known mononymously as Amaia, is a Spanish singer-songwriter, pianist and actress. After participating in many talent shows, she gained national recognition after winning series nine of musical television contest Operación Triunfo, later representing Spain alongside fellow competitor Alfred García at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest with "Tu Canción". Romero later signed with Universal Music and released her debut album Pero No Pasa Nada in 2019.

<i>Pero No Pasa Nada</i> 2019 studio album by Amaia

Pero No Pasa Nada is the debut studio album by Spanish singer and songwriter Amaia. It was released through Universal Music Spain on 20 September 2019. Consisting of ten solo tracks, the album is "an ode to a person's twenties". Produced by Santiago Motorizado, Núria Graham and the singer herself it spawned four singles: "El Relámpago", "Quedará en Nuestra Mente", "Quiero Que Vengas" and "Nuevo Verano" as well as the promotional single "Nadie Podría Hacerlo". Pero No Pasa Nada debuted atop the Spanish PROMUSICAE albums chart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abel Azcona</span> Spanish artist

Abel Azcona is a Spanish artist, specializing in performance art. His work includes installations, sculptures, and video art. He is known as the "enfant terrible" of Spanish contemporary art. His first works dealt with personal identity, violence and the limits of pain; his later works are of a more critical, political and social nature.

Amen, more commonly known as The Pederasty, is a conceptual, critical and process artwork by Abel Azcona. Over several months, Azcona attended Eucharists in churches and parishes that were linked to his childhood. In the churches, the artist keeps the wafer or consecrated host given to the attendees of the communion. He gathered two hundred and forty-two wafers, which was the number of cases of pederasty reported in the north of Spain during the previous decade. With the wafers, he made a work in which the word Pederasty could be read. The work was first exhibited at a central Madrid art gallery in the summer of 2015.

Empathy and Prostitution is a conceptual and performative work of critical and biographical content by artist Abel Azcona. Azcona was inspired by his biological mother, a prostitute, and sought to empathise with her and with the moment of his own conception. Azcona offered himself naked to the galleries' visitors on a bed with white sheets, so that they could exchange intimacy or have sexual relations with him.

<i>The Fathers</i> Performance art by Abel Azcona

The Fathers is a conceptual and performative work of critical and biographical content by artist Abel Azcona. The Fathers was first performed in 2016 in Madrid with the final performance, also in Madrid, in 2017 in an exhibition format. The durational piece included dozens of female survivors of prostitution who gave a physical description of their last client. On the other side of a ten-meter-long table, composite artists listened to them and drew images of the clients. The performance generated dozens of portraits which, at the closing of the work in 2017, were exhibited with the premise that any of them could be Azcona's father. The biographical work creates a critical discourse with prostitution and its inheritance, and in the case of Azcona himself, of an unknown father, having been conceived during an act of prostitution.

Abel Azcona, the son of a prostituted woman who is looking for his whoremonger father, because it perfectly summarizes everything that the patriarchy has built on their subordination and for our autonomy. Abel represents the aching son of an unknown father. All of us are those men who walk on their backs. To those who do not see their faces until the end. Those parents who sign unwritten covenants and who leave their semen springs across the planet. Those who rent vaginas, wombs, and maids. It is urgent to face those who prefer to remain installed in comfort. Only in this way will it be possible to turn our face towards the camera, without fear of being recognized in a robot portrait of a whoremonger father. Without fear of the mirror returning the image of a monster.

Buried is a conceptual and performative work of critical, social and political content by artist Abel Azcona. The performance artwork was created in 2015 through a public and participatory performance, or happening, on the esplanade of Franco's Monument to the Fallen in Pamplona. Azcona invited dozens of relatives of Republicans who were shot, persecuted or disappeared during the Spanish Civil War. Descendants of victims make up the installation in a row in front of the monument, all symbolically buried with soil from the garden of one of the participants, where his relatives had been shot. In 2016 the city of Pamplona invited Azcona to show his work inside the Monument and the project was recreated inside the Monument, which had been converted into an exhibition hall, under the name of Unearthed: A retrospective view on the political and subversive work of the artist Abel Azcona. The exhibition brought together the Buried project and fragments of all of Azcona's works.

There are symbols that cannot be covered. The Monument to the Fallen of Pamplona is a clear example. Fighting this symbol with another is what Navarrese artist Abel Azcona has proposed, known for his performance, sometimes controversial and often linked to the body. In this case, Azcona does not propose this new art exhibition as a war between symbols, but as an invitation to arouse feelings and, also, as a claim. For him, it is about inciting memory, individual and collective.

Eating is a conceptual and performative work of critical, polemical and political content by artist Abel Azcona. Also known as Eating a Koran, Eating a Torah and Eating a Bible.

The Shadow is a conceptual and performative work of critical, social and political content by artist Abel Azcona. In The Shadow, Azcona denounced cases of child abuse in a piece in which the survivors are the protagonists. In the work, Azcona presented more than two hundred actual cases of pedophilia in museums and galleries in various cities in Spain. At each show, Azcona gave a live performance from a wooden swing of the experiences of the survivors.

<i>The Shame</i> (performance art) Performance art by Abel Azcona

The Shame is a conceptual, critical and process artwork by Abel Azcona. Developed along the West Bank Wall in 2018, in The Shame Azcona installed original fragments of the Berlin Wall along the Israeli wall in the West Bank, which forms part of the barrier built throughout Israel to separate the Palestinian lands. Azcona made a metaphorical critique by merging both walls in the work. The actual installation, as if it were a piece of land art, currently remains along the wall, and has been exhibited in different countries through photographic and video art. The Israeli government has prohibited the artist from entering Israel because of the piece.

The Streets is a conceptual and performative work of critical and biographical content by artist Abel Azcona. At the end of 2014 and the early part of 2015, Azcona explored the processual work La Calle this time in the Santa Fe locality of Bogota, where he prostituted himself on the streets. In this new work, he explored a change towards the figure of his mother, taking hormones and engaging in prostitution. Azcona was inspired by his biological mother, a prostitute, and sought to empathise with her and with the moment of his own conception. The process continued in the cities of Madrid and Mexico City. The performance emerged, as with the rest of his sex-themed works, as an exercise in empathy with his own biological mother. It was also a social critique, where the artist explored the limits of his body by repeating patterns of sexual abuse, which occurred in his own childhood and in the life of his mother.

File 09812 is a conceptual and performative work of critical and biographical content by artist Abel Azcona. The artist shows, in an art installation and documentary way, his Social Welfare file, fully exposed in various occasions. These documents speak of a child in a situation of total abandonment, with visible signs of abuse, neglect and malnutrition, and testimonies from neighbors and the environment are provided confirming that the child could be left for weeks in total solitude in the apartment, which did not meet the minimum habitability conditions. The documentary installation is accompanied by a performative reading of each of the pages of the file by Abel Azcona himself. The artwork was responsible for inaugurating the International Contemporary Art Fair of the Mediterranean. The work was part of the retrospective exhibition dedicated to the artist by the city of Pamplona in 2015.

Disturbing and disconcerting. Intimate and emotional. Abel Azcona, who had already been seen by the fair, walks barefoot and dressed completely in black on the esplanade of the Palau de la Festa and surroundings. He stands among the people, who await him. He gets on stage with some papers. File No. 09812 begins. Azcona stands facing the public, who is staring, and begins to read the file. And so, among the coldness of those mechanical words and administrative jargon, his childhood is recounted; prostitute mother, drug addict father, from house to house, environments in which a child should never be found, social services, an expensive attempt at adoption by a foster family and even sexual abuse. A long process that evidences a hard childhood. Azcona finishes reading File No. 09812, his file. He finishes and gets off the platform, leaves the esplanade and walks through the surroundings in tears until Enrique Bocángelus, director of the International Contemporary Art Fair of the Mediterranean Mars, approaches him and they merge into a hug. People, meanwhile, read the file, perhaps trying to understand why a child has to go through something like that or simply thanking him for being able to expose it that way. Mars is silent, and that is only the first day.

The Nine Confinements, also known as The Deprivation of Liberty is a conceptual, endurance art and performative work of critical and biographical content by artist Abel Azcona. The artwork was a sequence of performances carried out between 2013 and 2016. All of the series had a theme of deprivation of liberty. The first in the series was performed by Azcona in 2013 and named Confinement in Search of Identity. The artist was to remain for sixty days in a space built inside an art gallery of Madrid, with scarce food resources and in total darkness. The performance was stopped after forty-two days for health reasons and the artist hospitalised. Azcona created these works as a reflection and also a discursive interruption of his own mental illness, being one of the recurring themes in Azcona's work.

Man Yu Fung Li, commonly known as Man Yu, is a Costa Rican artist, born in Hong Kong. She specializes in painting, but also incorporates multiple multidisciplinary media such as installation art, video art and performance art. Part of her work focuses on human anatomy, the different non-physical layers of the human being, humanism and respect for living beings.

<i>Spain Asks for Forgiveness</i> Art work by Abel Azcona

Spain Asks for Forgiveness is a conceptual and performative work of critical and anti-colonial content by recognized artist Abel Azcona. Created and started in Bogotá in November 2018 through a conference and a live performance by Azcona at the museum of contemporary art of Bogotá.

References

  1. ↑ Zas Marcos, Mónica (October 18, 2018). "Abel Azcona offers a gun to those who fantasize about killing him in his latest performance". El Diario.es. Retrieved January 8, 2019.
  2. ↑ Bernal, Fernando (March 3, 2015). "Abel Azcona, arrested naked for defending the rights of Pamplona students". Vice. Retrieved January 15, 2020.
  3. ↑ Urrutia, Isabel (August 24, 2013). "The madness of art gets far". La Rioja. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  4. ↑ Hernando, Silvia (August 17, 2013). "From the artistic confinement to the hospital". Infolibre. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  5. ↑ Gómez, Carolina (August 17, 2013). "Abel Azcona: artist or hero". Culturamas. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  6. ↑ Bueloha, Carmen (November 11, 2015). "Intimacy with Abel Azcona". Inquieta mental.
  7. ↑ El Hueco. "Abel Azcona, one of the most transgressive artists in the world". El Hueco. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  8. ↑ Davenport, Bill (February 26, 2014). "Lone Star Performance Explosion: Some of Night 2". Glasstire Texas Visual Art. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  9. ↑ Nichols, James Michael (December 22, 2017). "Heroic Artist Gets 'Make America Great Again' Tattooed Around His Anus". HuffPost. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  10. ↑ Otazu, Amaia (October 8, 2019). "Abel Azcona's exhibition with consecrated hosts arrives in Strasbourg". El Diario. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  11. ↑ Europa, Press (24 November 2015). "The Archbishopric of Pamplona-Tudela mobilizes against the exhibition of Abel Azcona". Europa Press. Retrieved December 24, 2019.
  12. ↑ Dani Domínguez (June 26, 2018). "Abel Azcona: "I prefer artists in prisons than silent artists in their studio"". La Marea . Retrieved September 22, 2018.
  13. ↑ Peio H. Riaño (April 9, 2017). "Abel Azcona: "Tattooing Donald Trump in the anus doesn't transform anything"". El Español . Retrieved September 22, 2018.
  14. ↑ M.B. (December 21, 2018). "Abel Azcona charged again for using consecrated hosts for a performance". El Español.
  15. ↑ "La Audiencia de Navarra confirma el archivo de la causa contra la exposición blasfema de Abel Azcona". ABC. 5 May 2017. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  16. ↑ EFE (7 May 2017). "Archivado el caso contra el artista Abel Azcona por utilizar hostias en una obra". Público. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  17. ↑ Redacción (8 October 2019). "Estrasburgo admite una querella contra España por la exposición de Azcona". Eitb Euskal Telebista. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  18. ↑ Redacción (8 August 2019). "Strasbourg handles the demand for Christian Lawyers for the exhibition of Abel Azcona with consecrated forms". La Vanguardia. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  19. ↑ Group FIDEX 2018, p. 96.
  20. ↑ H. Riaño, Peio (5 February 2019). "The artist Abel Azcona plants the judge who investigates him for writing "pederasty" with consecrated hosts". El País. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  21. ↑ Eitb Cultura (5 February 2019). "Abel Azcona does not attend a judicial summons in Barcelona and declares himself disobedient". Eitb Euskal Telebista. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  22. ↑ Redacción (20 December 2016). "Abel Azcona, from desecration to humiliation of victims of terrorism". Infovaticana. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  23. ↑ Tecé, Gerardo (20 February 2016). "Pussies, anti-system and half lies". Contexto CTX. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  24. ↑ "Instal·lacions vives a l'exposició "Naturaleza muerta" d'Abel Azcona". rocaumbert.com (in Catalan). Retrieved December 26, 2019.
  25. ↑ Cultura Granollers (10 April 2017). "The Life Art, about the death from Abel Azcona". Cultura Granollers. Retrieved December 24, 2019.
  26. ↑ Vallés, Elena (June 22, 2019). "Abel Azcona: "I prefer artists in prisons than comfortable creators in their studios"". Diario de Mallorca. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  27. ↑ Zas Marcos, Mónica (October 18, 2018). "Abel Azcona offers a gun to those who fantasize about killing him in his latest performance". El Diario. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  28. ↑ La Fábrica. "Eñe Festival celebrates ten years of commitment to literature". La Fábrica.
  29. ↑ De Las Heras Bretin, Ruth (October 20, 2018). "The artist in the gallows". El País. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.