José Gonzalez Espaliú

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.

Espaliú was born in Córdoba, Spain on October 26, 1955.

He was a multi-hyphenate artist, creating works as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, writer, and performance artist.

His work was primarily conceptual in nature.

Espaliú, a gay man, moved to Barcelona in the early 1970s at the tail-end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in search of a more welcoming social environment.

Espaliú then moved to Barcelona in the 1970s and started his own artistic career there.

His relationships with the art scenes of Catalonia and Sevilla helped him become more established and refine his artistic style.

Espaliú began to make conceptual art, which was highly-regarded in the Barcelona art scene at the time.

In the late 1970s he moved to Paris, exposing him to international art.

Accordingly, he was influenced by Lacan, Barthes, and Genet, as well as Rumi and San Juan de la Cruz.

Espaliú worked with a variety of media, mostly sculpture, painting, and public demonstration.

By the beginning of the 80s, his art “became a complex territory of concealment and desire, where issues such as the body, identity, the double, illness, power, and death were progressively weaved together.” Espaliú tended to draw on the emotionally-charged work of 13th-century Middle-Eastern poet Rumi, and especially on the sense of loss evoked in Rumi's works about the loss of Shams Tabrizi.

Additionally, Espaliú’s writing often referenced the idea that “the soul is the flesh”.

Common themes in his work were hollowness, concealment vs. exposure of self, the invocation of spirit, and the relationship between ‘lacking,’ prayer, and self.

He received an AIDS diagnosis in 1990, which influenced him to focus his art on the marginalization and suffering endured by himself and others with AIDS.

Espaliú’s art took a symbolic turn in 1990 when he learned that he had AIDS, and “through sculptures of cages and crutches, [Espaliú] referr[ed] to his condition and extrapolate[d] it into a shared universal order.” He received his diagnosis during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in Spain, when the disease was at its most stigmatized.

Thus, his work during this time was focused on the social marginalization and suffering endured by people with AIDS.

Knowing that he only had so long left to live, Espaliú dedicated his art to increasing consciousness of and solidarity towards those suffering of the condition.

Carrying (1992) was Espaliú’s most famous work.

In this performance piece, Espaliú was barefoot, sitting on the arms of friends and supporters who took turns carrying him as if he was sitting in a chair.

He was then transported: from the San Sebastian Film Festival headquarters to the San Sebastian town hall during the first iteration of the piece in San Sebastian, Spain and from the Parliament building to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in the second iteration of the piece in Madrid.

Espaliú’s ‘seat’ made out of arms and hands resembled thrones used by royalty.

Notably, his bare feet symbolized the exclusion and social contempt faced by those with AIDS in Spanish society.

The emotional natures of both Espaliú’s expression of pain and the audience's response put a spotlight on their shared humanity and the quickness to judge those with AIDS.

Carrying also garnered massive amounts of publicity because, at the time, much of the general public still believed that AIDS could be spread by simple skin-to-skin contact.

This demonstration drew attention to the fear it incited, and to misinformation on which that fear was founded.

One newspaper recount even referred to Espaliú as making himself into a ‘piety’.

Carrying shares its name with an Espaliú sculpture.

The iron sculpture depicts a rickshaw suspended in the air while embedded in a wall.

Most notably, his performance pieces Carrying and The Nest and his news article “Retrato del artista desahuciado” sought to draw attention to the social and spiritual experiences of living with AIDS, from which he passed away in 1993.

Since his Espaliú's death, his work has continued to be exhibited worldwide, including in his hometown of Córdoba in El Centro de Arte Pepe Espaliú (Pepe Espaliú Art Center).

Espaliú received an AIDS diagnosis in 1990, which eventually caused his death in Córdoba on November 3, 1993.

He produced relatively little work due to his premature death.

Espaliú grew up in Córdoba, Spain.

After the death of his mother when he was 13 years old, Espaliú became an orphan.

Espaliú eventually went on to attend School of Fine Arts in Sevilla.

There, he organized an exhibition of works by foreign artists at La maquina español.

His art at this time was described as “militant” and “angry”, with a focus on “movement, impotence, and friendship.” Espaliú died of complications related to AIDS at the age of 38 in 1993.

His total body of work reconciled seemingly contradictory ideas: pleasure and duty, health and pain, personal and political.

El Nido/The Nest (1993) was Pepe Espaliú’s final and “most personal” performance piece.