José Gonzalez Espaliú

One of Espaliú's later works utilizing cages, a visual motif in the years leading up to his death.

José Gonzalez Espaliú (Pepe Espaliú) (October 26, 1955 - November 2, 1993) was a Spanish artist and activist, best known for his performative and conceptual pieces.

Notable Works

"The Nest"

El Nido/The Nest (1993) was Pepe Espaliú’s final and “most personal” performance piece. The performance took place over the course of eight days on the grounds of the Museum Arnhem in the town of Arnhem, Netherlands. Each day, Espaliú, dressed in mens' formalwear, climbed a ladder to an octagonal wooden platform elevated in a tree and walked in circles, methodically removing more and more clothing as he walked. On the final day of the performance, Espaliú undressed to complete nudity. The artist compared the emotional and spiritual elements of his physical performance to those of Sufi whirling: continuous circular motion with the aim to become “purer and emptier” and “closer to God” with each rotation. Publicly, El Nido was received as “a revelatory piece, simultaneously direct, sad, final, hopeful, witty and serious." On a metaphorical level, the piece was interpreted as an attempt by the artist to “[construct] a symbolic shelter” and enact the connections between “the carnal and the psychic, the interior and exterior." Much like in Carrying (see above), the performance El Nido shares its name with an Espaliú sculpture. The latter is composed of eight crutches—an object that was a motif in Espaliú's final works—of different colors, all leaning on one another in order to remain standing.

"Untitled (Three Cages)"

Sin Título (Tres jaulas)/Untitled (Three Cages) (1992) is one of Espaliú’s most renowned sculptures. Formerly displayed in (confirm location), Untitled consists of a row three cages hanging which, in lieu of solid bottoms, have wires extending in all directions. Aligned with the materials (cages, crutches) and themes of illness and friendship in Espaliú’s later works, Untitled exemplifies how Espaliú, in the final years of his life, “[referred] to his condition and [extrapolated] it into a shared universal order."

Other Thematically Significant Works

Espaliú’s approach to making art about the experience of a body with AIDS was described as “direct and cathartic” while still “opting for the universal." Curators of galleries of his work have noted that, much aligned with the feminist movement that began a few decades earlier, Espaliú’s art seeks to ‘make the personal political.’

• Para asesinar una risa (1986) and La lealtad del verdugo (1986) are two examples of paintings that feature the face and examine its role as “an expression of identity,” a theme which, in addition to tortured identity and masking, Espaliú was known to explore.

• Sin Título/Untitled (1992) is a photograph of a public urinal building in Paris, around which his homosexual friends had gathered at his invitation. Below the photo is text in circular form that repeats “con o sin ti” (“with or without you”).

• In Espaliú’s final written piece, “Retrato del artista desahuciado” (“Portrait of a hopeless artist”) [1], he discusses the discrimination faced by the gay community and those living with AIDS in Spain at the time of publication in 1992.

External links

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