Dialectical Garments. Reflections on the Use of Clothes in José Pérez Ocaña and Miguel Benlloch’s Artistic Actions

Abstract

This article attempts to highlight the existing connections between the idea of dialectical image proposed by Walter Benjamin and the garments that, endowded with deep significance, are main objects in the performances of two Andalusian artists: José Pérez Ocaña and Miguel Benlloch. During the transition to democracy both develop an artistic production that questions gender binarism and its modulation through the cultural identity built by the Francoist dictatorship. In their actions, the accessories and clothes become cracks in history that allow them to recover forgotten memories, a dialectical encounter between a past still alive and a present that interrogates it. The affinity of the artists with outcasts, transcribed into an aesthetic interest in poverty, links them to Benjamin’s junkman, who tries to restore their history to the dispossessed through rejected materials.