Santos X (Saints X)

Pepe Espaliú is a key figure in the aesthetics of mourning and body politics that developed in Spanish culture around the AIDS pandemic. From the 1980s onwards, he was linked to the Seville magazine Figura, where he worked as a correspondent in Paris. The Santos were produced between 1987 and 1988, just before his diagnosis confirming him as HIV-positive, which would shape his
subsequent production. Numbered as a series from I to XII, they recall the apostles or prophets. They are made of leather, the most familiar material in his native Córdoba, by Seville saddlers from the company El Caballo. The design of a riding uniform and animal harness reference the sadomasochistic fetishes of desire proliferating in the gay liberation movement since the 1970s.
The artist explained that they were inspired by a visit to the British Museum: ‘I was overwhelmed by the statuary rooms of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and so on. I started some drawings based on that, emphasising that idea — very museum-like — of a mask resting on a horizontal surface.’When laid flat, they negate their status as faces and reference human remains, the decapitated heads of martyrs, John the Baptist ... in short, death. Espaliú said: ‘For me, every mask, like every garment, is a language of concealment.’ The Santos are nominal screens for a void, indicative of an
incessant desire for meaning that is never satisfied, always deposed.

Manuel Segade