Emilio López-Menchero

Trained as an architect, Emilio López-Menchero has been developing a cross-disciplinary artistic practice for several decades. Painting, drawing, performance art, urban and architectural interventions, photography, comics, video and sound are among the tools he employs. A graduate of La Cambre in Brussels, where he devoted his thesis to Hans Hollein and Austrian radical architecture, he maintains a constant relationship with the built environment, the city and its symbols, which permeates his entire body of work.

At the heart of his approach lie questions of identity, the role of the artist, and the way in which the body becomes at once a measure, a language and a canvas for projection. His work examines social constructs, stereotypes and collective narratives. His series Trying to Be, begun in 2000, is one of the most striking examples of this: by embodying various artistic, historical or political figures, Emilio López-Menchero explores the shifts between the self and the other, between representation, memory and fiction.

In 2000, Jan Hoet, director of SMAK in Ghent, invited him to take part in the ‘Over The Edges’ exhibition by creating an installation in a corner of the city. He responded by placing his hands at right angles and opening them in front of his mouth, suggesting that he let out Tarzan’s cry (Johnny Weissmüller) across the whole city! This sound intervention by Emilio López-Menchero, in which the iconic cry erupts at the heart of the urban space, disrupts the city’s ordinary rhythm with humour and strangeness. Through this gesture, as simple as it is striking, the artist transforms the everyday environment into a space of attention, surprise and dislocation. This work clearly reveals his way of intervening in reality, using a powerful sign that shifts our perception of places.

Whether he intervenes in public space or within more intimate settings, his work always seeks to create friction with reality. Several of his urban works, such as the giant megaphone entitled Pasionaria in Brussels or Checkpoint Charlie, bear witness to his interest in political issues, migration, borders, public discourse and coexistence within the contemporary city.

Throughout his residency, drawings and paintings will give shape to the project. He will conduct research on the history of Esch, its industrial and political past, including at the Resistance Museum, to fuel the entire process and bring “everything” together.