Abel Azcona

Metrópolis, the longest-running cultural program on Spanish television, celebrates 38 years on the air. It was on April 21, 1985, that an episode dedicated to Tokyo’s cultural scene appeared on La 2, welcoming a new television space that gradually found its place in the programming schedule—and in the hearts of many curious viewers eager to discover what was happening artistically around the world.

Although at certain points in its trajectory the program has undergone changes in format, it has maintained its original structure—a themed, presenter-less program of about 25 minutes—up to the present day. Precisely for this reason, it has become a cult television program and a collectible item, often used as educational material in Faculties of Fine Arts and Image Studies.

Metrópolis owes its creation to the arrival and immediate boom of video art in Spain in the mid-1980s. The program’s creators embraced video as an artistic language well suited to television. It was initially conceived as a laboratory of ideas and a showcase for emerging artists from all creative fields, but over time, video art, experimental cinema, short films, creative documentaries, video dance, music videos, and advertising creativity have become the main forms of expression shaping the program’s content.

Metrópolis, el programa cultural más longevo de la televisión en España, cumple 38 años en antena. Fue el 21 de abril de 1985 cuando un capítulo dedicado a la actividad cultural de Tokio aparecía en La 2 dando la bienvenida a un nuevo espacio televisivo que poco a poco se fue haciendo un hueco en la programación, y en el corazón de muchos espectadores deseosos y curiosos por conocer lo que estaba sucediendo a nivel artístico en el mundo.

Si bien en algunos momentos de su trayectoria ha experimentado alteraciones en su formato, ha mantenido el formato original, un programa temático sin presentador de en torno a 25 minutos de duración, hasta la actualidad. Precisamente por este motivo, se ha convertido en un programa televisivo de culto y objeto de coleccionismo que también se suele utilizar como material educativo en Facultades de Bellas Artes y Ciencias de la Imagen.

Metrópolis debe su creación a la llegada e inmediato 'boom' del videoarte en España a mediados de los 80. Los creadores del programa apostaron por el vídeo como un lenguaje artístico muy apto para ser mostrado en televisión. En un principio fue concebido como laboratorio de ideas y escaparate para artistas emergentes de todos los campos de la creación, pero, con el tiempo, el videoarte, el cine experimental, los cortometrajes, los documentales de creación, la video danza, los clips musicales o la creación publicitaria, han sido las formas de expresión que han conformado los contenidos principales del programa.

Metrópolis, from Televisión Española, after more than forty years as a key reference in contemporary art, has devoted monographic episodes to artists such as Valie Export, Maria Teresa Hincapié, Chiara Fumai, Marina Abramović, Santiago Sierra, Fina Miralles, Joan Jonas, Guerrilla Girls, Concha Jerez, Teresa Margolles, Pipilotti Rist, Dora García, Francis Alÿs, Regina José Galindo, Esther Ferrer, Marina Vargas, Tania Bruguera, Itziar Okariz, Patti Smith, Pilar Albarracín, Vito Acconci, Francis Alÿs, and Yoko Ono.

Abel Azcona is a leading figure in European performance art, particularly in autobiographical performance, a discipline he teaches at the Marina Abramović Institute (Athens). His entire artistic practice is a cry of pain, shaped by the abuse, violence, and extreme loneliness that marked his childhood.

Since his formative years, confessional performance has become his path to survival. His goal is not individual healing. His actions generate a collective catharsis in which emotions of liberation, healing, and revenge coexist.

A conversation before the “final act”

Metrópolis accompanied the artist during the preparation of his most recent exhibition projects, conceived around the theme of the maternal bond. The unexpected appearance of his biological mother in October 2023 led him to devise a series of performances preceding “the most important action of his life”: meeting his biological mother, who abandoned him at birth.

After months of sharing his artistic processes, just days before the “encounter action” with his mother, Abel granted a final interview to Metrópolis to reflect on his trajectory at that moment of biographical transition. His doubts and uncertainties shape the tone of an interview filled with honesty and hope.

Writing and prolonged performative processes

Azcona’s actions do not function as closed works. They unfold over time, are affected by social events, and are reactivated as new biographical elements emerge. Although the artist’s body is the initial trigger of the work, in the exhibition space the action’s documentation is accompanied by testimonies, letters, and symbolic objects that expand the audience’s interpretations.

In his imaginative universe, writing plays an essential role. The written word becomes the intermediary of the narrative. It is important to know that Abel Azcona has developed, alongside his visual practice, a valuable literary body of work (diaries, critical texts, poetry, narrative), with the epistolary genre serving as the seed for many projects.

Among these pieces in which correspondence is central, the following stand out:
“El perdón” (2022), a project centered on a letter written with irony and affection by Chusa García Camón, Azcona’s art history professor who introduced him to performance;
the ongoing project “Cuidados” (2024), composed of letters written by artists and various individuals who cared for him in previous performances;
and the dazzling “Exégesis de la madre” (2024), the complete testimony of his mother’s life in epistolary form.

Two key exhibitions and the actions directed toward the mother

Metrópolis focuses especially on two of his recent major exhibition projects, which helped frame his relationship with the maternal bond and with the idea of family. They are:
“Abel Azcona. Mis familias 1988–2024”, curated by Víctor Ramírez Tur at La Panera (Lleida), and
“El papel de la familia”, at El Cuartel de Artillería (Murcia), curated by Pedro A. Cruz and Cintia G. Reyes.

These exhibitions organize and give form to the artist’s emotional history, narrating through selected works the milestones of his life story: maternal absence, the non-biological father, abandonment by the adoptive family, the imagined mother and father, chosen mothers… among other themes, building a puzzle woven from pain.

The confessional nature of the works, in which Azcona bares his intimacy, is revolutionary coming from a male artist in a social and artistic context marked by patriarchy, which denies men the possibility of expressing vulnerability. It is no coincidence that Azcona considers the feminist performance artists of the 1970s, who coined the phrase “the personal is political,” as his key references.

The works presented do not simply narrate Azcona’s personal life; they open debates about the traditional idea of family and about the possibilities of embracing other affective models.

Actions that push the body to the limit

Following the tradition of ritual performance, pioneered by feminist artists of the 1970s (Valie Export, Hannah Wilke, Orlan, Marina Abramović, among others), Azcona creates performances in which he explores his identity-related anxieties using his most instinctive self.

In the powerful action “Mamá” (2024), he repeats the word “mom” until he loses his voice. These are radical actions in which the artist relinquishes control over his own body in order to touch the deep pain of trauma. The program includes excerpts from two of his most emblematic actions in this vein:
“Empathy and Prostitution” (2013–2014), performed in Bogotá, Madrid, and Houston, in which he exposes his body for the public to use as they wish for a modest fee;
and “La savia” (2022), performed in Madrid and Amsterdam, in which—empathizing with his mother’s life—he consumes heroin, exposing the degradation of his body to the public in an attempt to regress to the maternal womb and to the withdrawal syndrome with which he entered the world.

Relational actions… open to the community

Alongside these physically risky works, the artist also develops others with a social or “relational” tone, integrating naturally into the flow of everyday life. These actions often require the help or participation of attendees. The program includes:
“La abogada de familia” (2024), an original performative meeting with a family lawyer to study the possible adoption of the artist by his biological mother;
“Un micrófono obligatorio” (2024), in which an open microphone gathers advice offered by attendees—many of whom also carry legacies of abandonment—before he meets his mother;
and the striking “Madre o no madre” (2024), a live reception and opening of the letter containing the DNA test results between the possible mother and the artist.

In Azcona’s actions, the present moment is an essential ally. The artist prepares the ingredients that will trigger the earthquake of the action, but he does not determine the exact course beforehand. He creates the context from which the spark of revelation may emerge—unknown to both the audience and himself until it occurs. This interplay of risk and chance with the present makes his actions unique and distinctive.

Mother and Son (Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2025)

On April 1, 1988, the day he was born, Abel Azcona was abandoned in the hospital by his mother, a young prostitute and heroin addict living in absolute precarity. Thirty-seven years later, mother and son reunited in person in a performance preceded by earlier exchanges (letters, videos, and phone messages), with the purpose of opening a new chapter in their lives and attempting to heal together their shared history of violence.

The action—curated with sensitivity and mastery by Semíramis González, who delicately balanced the emotions of all three parties: mother, son, and community—is summarized in the curator’s words:
“it goes beyond the personal, as it highlights how art can serve as a means to heal wounds, make pain visible, and offer resistance to patriarchal structures. The performance creates a space for reflection on the violence suffered by both: on one hand, Azcona’s story, marked by childhood abandonment; and on the other, Isabel’s testimony, shaped by addiction, prostitution, and vulnerability to gender-based violence.”

Mother and son hold hands thirty-seven years later. The active silence of the audience is palpable. Cultural figures seated in the front rows may draw the most media attention, but they are not the most important. The room is filled with the artist’s loyal followers, with whom he has shared stories of abandonment and violence for years—people who have traveled from afar to participate in this communion of bodies. Bodies stunned into silence by astonishment and emotion. Breath is held until the final embrace between mother and son, an embrace that breaks the silence into applause.

Susana Blas