Abel Azcona

Abel Azcona (born Madrid, 1988) is a Spanish artist best known for performance art, though his practice also includes installations, sculpture, video art, painting and autobiographical writing. He belongs to the Spanish contemporary art scene of the first two decades of the twenty-first century. His works, which combine live action with process-based art, have sparked public debate about religion, sexual abuse, prostitution and mental illness.

Azcona's early years are hard to reconstruct with certainty, since he has given different accounts of his childhood and adoption over time. What seems clear is that he was born in Madrid on 1 April 1988 and grew up in Pamplona, where he moved through several households before being adopted as a child. His name also changed according to official records, and at twenty he chose to return to the name Abel, as a tribute to his biological mother.

His artistic career began in Pamplona in 2005, with critical street actions made while he was a student at the local art school. Around 2013 his work took on a more autobiographical focus. In Empathy and Prostitution he offered his naked body to visitors in galleries in Bogotá, Madrid and Houston. Later pieces, such as Amen, or Paedophilia, pair the action with documentation of the reactions it provokes, and have led to public protests and court cases.

Azcona has shown his work at international biennials and festivals, including those in Dhaka, Taipei, Lyon and Miami. The Bogotá Museum of Contemporary Art gave him a retrospective exhibition in 2014. His legacy lies in the debate he has provoked about the limits of the body, pain and protest in art, and his work continues to generate discussion among critics and conservative sectors of Spanish and Latin American society.