Identidade do Artista (Artist Identity)

Angelo de Aquino

Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1945 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2007
  • Date: 
    1973-1984
  • Technique: 
    Collage on cardboard
  • Descriptive technique: 
    An intervention by different artists on the file created by the author
  • Dimensions: 
    33 x 22 cm
  • Edition/serial number: 
    Unique piece
  • Entry date: 
    2021
  • Register number: 
    DO03695
  • Long-term loan of Fundación Museo Reina Sofía, 2021 (Donation of Jorge M. Pérez)

The career arc of Brazilian artist Angelo de Aquino was shaped by an experimentation with different contemporary languages. In the early 1970s, he started work on pieces in mediums such as video, xerox, photo-performance and Mail Art, establishing a network of exchange with artists from Asia, Australia, Canada, the United States, Latin America and Europe. His work Identidade do Artista is regarded as one of the major reference points in the Mail Art movement, with its capacity to cross geographical, political and social borders in the turbulent atmosphere of the time. The ensemble comprising it was assembled over eleven years, from 1973 to 1984, by establishing an intensive network of correspondence between Aquino and artists from over twenty countries. Aquino sent a template sheet around the world that recipients had to fill out with their personal details, and which left a space reserved for “a creation”. From this exercise of exchange and self-expression, artists’ files belonging to Wolf Vostell, Mirella Bentivoglio, Christo, Pierre Restany, Ivens Machado, Julio Plaza, Clemente Padín, Horacio Zabala, and numerous others, are conserved. Identidade do Artista constitutes a type of archive that grants the spectator an intimate connection with the poetics of each artist-participant-correspondent, and, in addition to putting forward the common, intrinsic questioning of the very act of being an artist, the piece, taken as a whole, gives rise to a reflection around the totalitarian, bureaucratic and controlling nature of the identity card.

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