Abel Azcona closes Amén o La Pederastia with a cathartic and pain-filled performance.
It was not easy what Abel Azcona did last February 22 at the Museu de l’Art Prohibit. It has been 8 years since he began to make the piece Amén or La Pederastia; and to close the project, the artist did it through a process of almost two hours with the viewing of acts of persecution to the work, an intimate conversation about it and a performance recalling that every host carries a story of pain behind. For him, pedophilia is “one of the greatest scourges of history” and he considers the Catholic Church to be “a criminal organization”.
Documenting the whole process so that what is behind the piece is not lost is one of the artist’s fixations. That is why he has made some pieces with the main documentation that accompanies it. After years of complaints, open court cases and exile, last November 22 the last case was officially closed in the Court of Strasbourg to which Abogados Crisitanos had gone to sue Spain for “sponsoring the most blasphemous artist in history”.
Azcona, who after doing this work confesses that it has cost him a lot to understand that sexual abuse is the daily bread, is convinced that “abortion is one of the greatest measures of child protection that exists”.
Author of processual works that move in the territories of abandonment and abuse, Abel Azcona has established himself as one of the Spanish performers with more international projection. Amén o La Pederastia can be visited permanently at the Museu de l’Art Prohibit.