Art and Urban Activism in the Eighties: The Sin Larios Project by Agustín Parejo School

Abstract

This paper analyses selected works by Agustín Parejo School, a group of artists active throughout the eighties and early nineties in the province of Malaga. Their artistic produc‐ tion provides us with an example of citizen activism in Spain after the “Transición”. Agustín Parejo School turned street and collective participation into indispensable tools of its activity, through actions, graffiti, interventions in public monuments, or the dramatiza ‐ tion in public space, etc. Here we analyze specially one offer: the transitory movement of the sculpture of the Marquess of Larios from his pedestal to the sidewalk in the work called Sin Larios (1992). Along with the parody of political candidacy in the Caucus action (1986), and the decent housing claim in Sin vivienda (1991), a pioneering example of urban art in the democratic Spain ‐‐and of the possible polemic they may cause with political power detainers. Irony, polemic, visual poetry, activism, collective participation, and the street as a canvas, are the ingredients of the artistic activity by the collective Agustín Parejo School, preceding the reactivation of this kind of artistic practices that took place on the nineties.