Nel Amaro. Poetic Action
Exhibition about the work of the performer, poet, novelist, playwright and cultural activist Nel Amaro, under the programming of the Motiva Design Journeys 2015
Some people define artistic practice as the antithesis of the sphere of work. But nevertheless, careers like the one of Nel Amaro make such a definition meaningless. When creating is also creating self-will, notions like productivity transcend the separation between professional and personal, leading to a dedication that goes beyond the eight-hour working day for five days a week. If for the artist Richard Long walk without a route or clear goal can be a way of creating useful to reveal the contradictions of our technocratic societies, we must also understand the life of Nel Amaro (Quentuserrón, Mieres, 1946-Oviedo, 2011) as an art form: a totalizing and dematerialized attempt, to convert life into art, making every gesture a political tool for social transformation, along with a nonnegotiable vital stance against reality.
Political prisoner during the end of Franco´s Regime, from the 70s Nel Amaro published books of poems, novels, plays, essays, comics, tales and articles. Through the use of the Asturian language, literature left testimony of the social problems that, then and now, live in the Asturian coalfields. This documentary piece of his career collects materials from 1988, year which is dedicated to visual poetry as part of the Auxilios Mutuos group.
This exhibition includes various documents and works of its many facets as creator. From fanzines and other publications in which he participates, his work on art by mail (mail-art), sending messages through images and objects, and also the phonetic and visual poetry to finally lead the field action. From the 90s Amaro became one of the most prominent Asturian representatives of the performance, besides being a key factor to understanding networking before the network diagram. Often his works are hidden behind names of various groups: Ethnic Art 100% Llaboratoriu Turon Escéntricu, NGO performers sin fronteras, Fundizióm Malevich, Espaciu Arte Escéntricu, etc ... sometimes he had the collaboration of Abel Loureda or Rogelio Crespo, and even his dog Pulgu.
If the choice of tools, brackets or themes, as Roland Barthes writes, determines the structure of the work and also incorporates the artist to a community sense, the work of Nel Amaro, in transit through diverse formats and styles, blurs the limits of some and other categories. Thus, it is only the behaviour of the artist as key to understand his determination. Yet in his work, feelings, ways of doing, humour, words or thought, as Harald Szeemann would say, are attitudes that are forms simultaneously.
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