YOU ARE NOT ALONE Festival: Háblame, cuerpo

Háblame, cuerpo is part of Looking for Pepe, a research project initiated by Nazario Díaz in 2016 that takes as its starting point the figure of the Cordoban artist Pepe Espaliú (1955–1993). From there, it unfolds a series of investigations around the body, language, and territory.

The title Háblame, cuerpo comes from the text written by Juan Vicente Aliaga for the exhibition held at the Pabellón Mudéjar in Seville in 1994, a year after Espaliú’s death due to AIDS.

The study around Espaliú - and how he forged connections between his artistic practice and his personal circumstance, marked by illness during a time of profound social and political transformation - inspires a work that reflects on matter that mutates or disappears, and on the notions of wear, erosion, and constraint of the body as both a physical and social existence.

“I propose an act of resistance that weaves together aspects such as the phonetic transformation of my vocal flow, the notion of circularity, or the idea of erasure through insistence; placing my body in collision with language and embracing a certain oscillation of geography and identity.”
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About the author

Nazario Díaz (Linares, Jaén) develops his work primarily in the field of the performing arts, focusing on the tensions generated between body, gaze, and writing.

In recent years, alongside his activity with the collective Vértebro, he has participated in several contexts of collective learning (MA in Performing Arts Practice and Visual Culture, Madrid / 2016–2017; PICA, Azala-Vitoria / 2018–2019; Invitación, Bilbao / 2019–2020), exchanging methodologies and tools from the fields of dance and live arts.

His work has been supported by contexts such as Terrassa Noves Tendències (Barcelona), Reims Scènes d’Europe (France), Encuentro Internacional de Artes Vivas de Tlalpan (Mexico City), Matadero (Madrid), Festival Sâlmon< | Mercat de les Flors (Barcelona), Azkuna Zentroa Alhóndiga (Bilbao), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Real Academia de España en Roma, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Galería Foco (Lisbon), Centro Párraga (Murcia), and Can Felipa Arts Visuals (Barcelona).

He currently lives between Lisbon and Bilbao, where he develops the projects Conversation pieces, with the sound collective Metal Performers and Basque choreographer Isaak Erdoiza, and Otro borrado a través de la insistencia, within the Advanced Program for Creation in Performing Arts curated by João Fiadeiro for Forum Dança, Lisbon. Out of these processes emerged the works fuego verde (BAD Bilbao, 2021) and amanecer alto cielo (Azkuna Zentroa | Alhóndiga Bilbao, 2024).