Photograph of Aníbal Lopez’s Testimonio (Witness) performance at Documenta. Courtesy of Prometeo Gallery di Ida Pisani, Milan
Upon his invitation to participate in dOCUMENTA (13), in Kassel in 2012, Aníbal Lopez, known as A-1 53167—which was the number of his identity card in his native Guatemala—invited a sicario to talk about his
deeds before a live audience. In Testimonio (Testimony) (2012), the hired assassin talked about a life marked by violence, in which killing merely constituted a job that he performed to earn a living.
Opposite page: Aníbal Lopez A-1 53167 Testimonio (Witness) (2012) Video, 43’ 39” Still from video. Courtesy of Prometeo Gallery di Ida Pisani, Milan
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níbal Lopez was born in 1964 in Guatemala, where he lived and worked until 2014 when he passed away. A pioneer of performance art in Central America, López (also known as A-153167, his identification number) become notorious for his extreme actions and disruptive urban interventions. Generally aimed at immersing viewers into the region’s social and political tensions, his works combined the dry language of 1960/1970s conceptual art with the revolutionary ethos of a Latin American guerrillero. López’s oeuvre is characterized by disrupting cultural codes and challenging institutional power. He was invited to participate in dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel. Lopez also had a solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural de España in
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Guatemala City (2011) and put on numerous performances over the years. Some of his international group exhibitions include the Bienal de Pontevedra (2010), Bienal do Mercosul (2007), the Prague Biennale (2003) and the Venice Biennale (2001), where he was awarded the Golden Lion as Best Young Artist. His work consists in proposing to people a way of thinking that, with plans or without them could unveil doubts or solutions. He opens a discourse where people could discuss themes that could help solve lives as a community. The artist did not consider himself a conceptual or minimalist, but utilitarian of these mediums, as a precise way of approaching concrete subjects without much paraphernalia.
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