An architect by training, Emilio López-Menchero graduated from the La Cambre Institute of Architecture in
(Brussels) in 1986. He devoted his thesis to the Austrian architect Hans
Hollein, author of the manifesto Alles ist Architektur (Everything is Architecture), published in 1967. He continued his
training at La Cambre, in Jean Glibert’s ‘Urban Spaces’ workshop. His artistic
work constantly refers to architecture and his works are often the result of a
subtle blend between this discipline and visual arts. Since 1999, he has been
teaching the ‘AA Art & Architecture’ course at the Cambre-Horta Institute
Whether it is performativity, pictorial, photographic, sculptural or
interventions in the urban space, López-Menchero's work attempts to intervene
in reality. Body and identity are the pillars of his approach. The body as a
scale, as a receptacle of nervous flux or as a fantasised ‘object’ is also the
vehicle of all construction of identity. This construction is marked, in the
work of the artist, by his dual cultural background, both Belgian and Spanish.
The artist also has a special interest in migrants and the figure of the
artist. This relationship with identity is particularly striking in his
series Trying to be, initiated in 2000. He slips into the skin
of artists (Pablo Picasso, Honoré de Balzac, Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo, James
Ensor); but also of historical figures like Yasser Arafat, Rasputin or Che
Guevara. These incarnations are based on archives that he tries to approach as
accurately as possible by the photographic medium and for which dressing up
requires an introspective approach helping the artist to compose his own identity.
His multidisciplinary and polymorphic pieces
echo each other and highlight the codes of Western society. He has produced
several works in the public space including Pasionaria. Dedicated to all migrants, this permanent intervention is a
4-metre-long megaphone located at the beginning of the Avenue Stalingrad in
Brussels, near the Gare du Nord, at a key location of the Belgian capital where
many events take place.
