STORIES

CONCHA JEREZ. FUSILADOS ESTA MAÑANA, 1975

Autor: Andrea González

Fusilados esta mañana (recuperación de una noticia) consists of four intervened photocopies of the pages the newspaper Informaciones devoted to the last executions carried out by the Franco regime, which occurred in Madrid on Saturday, September 27, 1975. The artist had the following to say about these initial works: «(...) At first I was interested in the information in the newspapers. I’m talking about the Franco era, when all language was distorted. I began to use their texts to craft counter narratives to what I was reading. But doing so could have landed me in jail, so my solution was self-censorship. That was the origin of my "illegible self-censored writings": I extracted news stories and what I did not want to be read I hid with my own writings, illegible and self-censored» (ABC Cultural, 21-07-2014).

With a degree in political science and having studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, her focus began to shift in 1976 from paper as a medium to the realm of objects, installing objects and texts in spaces to alter their presence. The world of performance was next, including installations and intermedia concerts, intermedia and radio performances, videos, albums and more. These were done either individually or in collaboration with the composer and intermedia artist José Iges.

Concha Jerez has been awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts (2011), the National Prize for Plastic Arts (2015) and the Velázquez Prize for Plastic Arts (2017). In addition, she has managed to combine her practice as an artist with teaching, holding the position of professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Salamanca.

Archivo Lafuente’s Concha Jerez collection consists of original works such as Sumario de un proceso político, versión 1 (1974), Dos textos autocensurados desiguales (1975), Recuperación de 12 críticas de arte (1978); artist’s books like Fotos (Recuperación de 12 críticas de arte), Títulos (Recuperación de 12 críticas de arte), 12 críticas de Arte 12 páginas de estéticas, all from 1978; and catalogs, photographs and accompanying documents, including those preserved in the Fuera de Formato collection. These latter items relate to her co-curation, together with the artist Nacho Criado, of the exhibition «Fuera de formato» (Madrid, 1983), the first of its kind dedicated to conceptual art in Spain, which took place in 1983 at the Centro Cultural de la Villa in Madrid.

Archivo Lafuente preserves works and documents by other artists and collectives who, be it from the perspective of conceptualism (Francesc Abad and Jordi Benito) or political activism (La Familia Lavapiés and El Cubri), treated the theme of the last five people executed by the Franco regime.

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