Romancero Books with the support of the Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs of the Spanish Embassy in London and AC/E Programme for the Internalisation of Spanish Culture presents the IV Festival of Queer Literature in Spanish in London - FQLSL
Pepe Espaliù - The impossible truth. Texts 1987-1993
A lecture by curator Jesús Alcaide
In the last years of his life, Pepe Espaliú placed poetic writing on the same level as his work in other artistic disciplines. In his poems — following very different forms: verse and prose, broken syntax and narrative with the desire to revise myths — he erected a discourse around identity, developed in art and in AIDS, in which the influences of San Juan de la Cruz, Roberto Juarroz or José Ángel Valente can be traced.
The Impossible Truth. Texts 1987-1993 does not vindicate an artist who also wrote, but rather vindicates a writer who was an artist at the same time. In this volume—edited by Jesús Alcaide, art curator and one of the great experts on the work of Pepe Espaliú—we collect his published work, both in the book En estos cinco años and in magazines and catalogues, and we incorporate previously unpublished works taken from his workbooks.
Pepe Espaliú was born in Córdoba in 1955. He trained in Barcelona and Paris, and is now considered one of the central artists of the eighties generation in Spain. He died in Córdoba in 1993. Ten years later, the MNCARS dedicated a large exhibition to him. Since 2010, there has been an art centre in his hometown named after him. He worked outstandingly on the theme of identity, which he expanded upon at the end of his life after learning of his illness. His work is responsible for one of the most profound conceptualisations of the experience of AIDS, understood as a fight against exclusion and lack of communication, which materialises in his most famous performance: Carrying . Fragile, without touching the ground and dependent on the solidarity of others, Pepe Espaliú made a plea against the stigma of his illness. The testimony of AIDS also appears as the backbone of his writing, together with identity and the experience of art itself. During his lifetime he published only one book, En estos cinco años (Estampa, 1993). The edition of La imposible verdad is based on this work, expanding it with some texts already published, and others rescued from the notebooks that form part of the archive of the Pepe Espaliú Art Centre.
Jesús Alcaide (Córdoba, 1977) is a researcher, art critic and independent curator. He develops his research and curatorial work in different territories of contemporary art practices.
Among the exhibitions he has curated are Rock my illusion (Botí Foundation for the arts, 2007) Dutch Play: New audiovisual languages in the collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute (I+CAS, 2010), Mario Montez. It's Wonderful (El Palomar, 2014), Agustín Parejo School (CAAC, 2016), Disfonías (Centro Párraga, 2016), Itziar Okariz. A construction, that is, a hierarchy of moments, expressive of a certain moment big or small, esoteric, abstract, CA2M, 2017), Back to school (Botí Foundation for the arts, 2018), WB. Here are the undead (Sant Andreu Contemporani, 2018), Facba. The chrystal laughs (2018), Mia anima nera (Blueproject Foundation, 2019), Vivir-Juntos. A sharing of distances (C3A, 2020), Réplica. Tour de force. Joan Morey. IEB. (ARCO 2021), Ones-Olas-Waves (Casal Solleric, Palma, 2023), Just Gestures (Artnueve, 2024) y AIDS. A silence history in the balearic scene (Es Baluard, Palma, 2024).
Throughout his career he has paid special attention to research on the work of Pepe Espaliú, to whom he has dedicated exhibitions such as The names of the Father (Centro de arte Pepe Espaliú, 2013), Pepe Espaliú. Barcelona-Hospitalet. Tres temps (Tecla Sala, 2018), Pepe Espaliú. In these twenty-five years (García Galería, 2018), Pepe Espaliú/Juan Muñoz-Correspondences (Sala Verónicas, 2019) or Pepe Espaliú. Portrait(s) of an artist (Pepe Espaliú Art Center, 2021).
He was also director of the program of performances Pepe Espaliú. Here and now, dedicated to Pepe Espaliú which were held in different locations
Talk in English
Copies of the book (only in Spanish) will be available for purchase at the end of talk.
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