6. May – 12. September 2022
Schwules Museum
Curators:
Samuel Perea-Díaz
Pepe Sánchez-Molero Martínez
1947 March 24th, born a twin in Cantillana, Andalucía, fourth of six siblings.
1954 (*) Modification of 1933 “Ley de Vagos y Maleantes,” (“Vagrants and Rogues Law”) including homosexuality as a behavior considered antisocial by the fascist regime.
1959 After his father’s death, Ocaña left school to support his family, working in the fields and painting walls.
–
1968 Forced to join military service in Cádiz and later in Madrid for two years; first exhibitions in Madrid and Cantillana.
1970 (*) “Ley de Peligrosidad y Rehabilitación Social” (fascist “Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation Law”, adds on to the homophobic 1954 law).
–
1971 Ocaña moved to Barcelona, worked as a wall painter while taking artistic painting classes.
1973 performances in several venues; numerous collaborations with Camilo; first participation in a group art exhibition.
1975 (*) Fascist dictator Francisco Franco dies after 39 years of regime; a political transition to democracy starts in Spain.
–
1977 (*) June 15th first Spanish democratic general elections held since the fascist dictatorship.
(*) June 26th first “Manifestació de l’orgull gai” (“Gay Pride Demonstration” in Catalan) at Barcelona’s Ramblas.
Exhibition “Un poco de Andalucía” at Mec-Mec Gallery in Barcelona, gradually gaining public recognition and becoming a popular and controversial public figure.
Shooting of the film “Ocaña, Retrat Intermitent”, directed by Ventura Pons.
1978 Detained by the police for “public scandal” with Nazario.
1979 Presentation of “Ocaña, Retrat Intermitent” at the Berlinale.
Shooting of “Ocaña, der Engel der in der Qual singt” performance in front of Brandenburg Gate directed by Gérard Courant.
Exhibition “Incienso y Romero” at Pata Gallo Gallery in Zaragoza.
Shooting of the Film “Manderley” directed by Jesús Garay.
1980 Couple of years of prolific and intense artistic production, and exhibitions in Spain and France.
1982 Shooting of the short film “Silencis”, Xavier-Daniel, shown at Berlinale in 1983.
Exhibition “La Primavera” in Barcelona.
1983 During popular festivities “Semana de la Juventud” celebrations in Cantillana, Ocaña’s costume caught on fire. He died a few days later due to complications related to burns and Hepatitis at the age of 36 on September 18th in Sevilla.
The first print of this lithography series was a present from Ocaña to his sister, Luisa Pérez Ocaña, the first family member he came out to via letter during his military service. The lithography exhibited at Schwules Museum (number 14/15) is a present that Ocaña gave to Serafín Fernández Rodríguez during the shooting of the short film “Silencis” in Barcelona.Serafín has been a Spanish LGBTQI+ activist, and volunteer at the Schwules Museum since 2008. Recently, Emilio Spampinato directed a short documentary about him and his husband entitled “Fernández Pratsch” (2020), which was awarded in several queer festivals. The short documentary encapsulates the testimony of Serafín as a Spaniard exiled in Germany.
Pepe Espaliú (Córdoba, 1955-1993), one of Andalucia‘s most internationally recognized queer artists, described Ocaña in one of his last writings (“Libro de Andrés”) before Espaliú’s death due to AIDS-related complications:
“How to forget Pepe Ocaña. That living party, man and woman at the same time. With him, I learned that homosexuality could be lived at any time and in any place, wherever you were; and so I admired how, with four colors, he reorganized “Semana Santa” (Easter) in the streets of Chinatown. A queer “Semana Santa”. How he dressed in tinsel to go to Las Ramblas on those spring nights. Ocaña was an angel, an angel of Havana, a hummingbird and a parrot on fire at the same time, and that‘s how he died: burning. Happy with himself. I remember, how, when one of Barcelona‘s oldest and most intellectual critics, Cirici Pellicer, came to see him in his studio, Ocaña, no good painter, appeared with make up on and, without further ado, sat on Cirici‘s lap and told him… ‘let‘s talk about something else, my dear’…”Espaliú, Pepe: “Libro de Andrés. Un Cuento Del Ayer” (1987-1993).
Catalan photographer Colita (Isabel Steva Hernández, Barcelona 1940) took this picture during a photo shoot with Camilo (Camilo Cordero, Moguer, Huelva 1953-1994) and Ocaña in Barcelona. The mantilla worn by Ocaña is a key element of his cross-dressing improvisations. Camilo and Ocaña collaborated in many performances together; an example can be found in the film „Ocaña, Retrat Intermitent“, where they reclaimed and queered the public space of Las Ramblas avenue with their dramatic spontaneity.Camilo died in 1994 due to AIDS-related complications in his hometown of Moguer, to which he returned from Barcelona after not being able to recover from Ocaña‘s spontaneous death in 1983.
Ocaña, Camilo and Nazario (Nazario Luque Vera, Castilleja del Campo, Sevilla 1944) emigrated to seek work opportunities, and freedom to express their sexual identity. The three Andalusians met in Barcelona, and they are remembered as an important part of the “Barcelona Underground” (ca. 1976-79), a movement that heralded the “Movida Madrileña” movement of the 1980s. Ocaña’s life and work is very present in Nazario’s autobiographies, “La vida cotidiana del dibujante underground” („The daily life of the underground cartoonist“ 2016) and “Sevilla y la Casita de las Pirañas” (“Sevilla and the little Piranha House” 2018), both presented in this exhibition.Nazario, artist, cartoonist and writer, is the creator of Anarcoma, the first Trans superheroine character in the history of Spanish comics. The adult comic strips of Anarcoma regularly appeared in the magazine “El Víbora” and portrayed explicit sex scenes around Barcelona. Anecdotally, Ocaña appears as a character in the Anarcoma chapter from the fourth edition of “El Víbora”, in 1980.
The film portrays Barcelona at the beginning of the Spanish political transition of the 1970’s, intertwining Ocaña’s interviews and performances with friends, such as Camilo and Nazario. The artist talks freely about his lifestyle and his religious inspirations, as well as his art and everyday life. During the interviews, he opens up about his queer and fluid sexuality while growing up surrounded by a catholic heteronormative family structure.Ventura Pons (Barcelona, 1945) visited Berlin in 1979 with Ocaña on the occasion of the 29th Berlinale, to participate in the festival’s “international forum of young films”. “Ocaña, Retrat Intermitent” is Ventura Pons’ directorial debut, and he is nowadays one of the best-known Catalan queer film directors.
The presented audio-visual work is a 10-minute film that was recorded on top of a tourist platform located in West Berlin, in front of the Brandenburg Gate. This exhibit is one of the most relevant traces that Ocaña left in the city, as a side product of his visit when presenting the film “Ocaña, Retrat Intermitent” in the 1979 Berlinale. The film was shot and directed by Gérard Courant as a silent film and dubbed later on. This unique piece presented in the Schwules Museum is probably one of the few queer interventions by Hispanic artists in the Berlin wall.Gérard Courant (Lyon 1951) is a French filmmaker and artist. He portrayed Ocaña in Berlin as part of his project “Cinématon”. From 1978 until 2009, the director recorded 3111 silent vignettes (“cinématons”) of various celebrities and artists. Both Courant and Joseph Morder are interviewed in the documentary “Ocaña. La memoria del Sol” (“Ocaña. Memory of the Sun”), directed by Juan J. Moreno in 2013, and explain how the performances took place in Berlin (video) and Cannes (audio).
In this piece, the audience encounters two different performances simultaneously, a visual one and an aural one, that together generate the final audio-visual work, which is the main art piece presented in the exhibition. Comparing the video on the screen and the sound on the speaker, one can notice an evident lack of synchronization between both. The performance was filmed in Berlin as a silent movie. The recording of the soundtrack takes place in an improvised happening during the 1979 Cannes film festival. In this event Ocaña watches the video while dubbing, singing and reacting to it spontaneously in front of an audience.
During the performance “Ocaña, der Engel der in der Qual singt”, Ocaña shares the stage with a Marilyn Monroe life-size cutout advertisement and interacts with her, using her as a puppet. Gerárd Courant and Ocaña must have taken the cutout from a West Berlin cinema when they were part of the Berlin film festival, initiating in this way the entire improvised performance. At the beginning of the performance, Ocaña explains that he has found her crying in front of Brandenburg Gate: from this initial point on, he improvises a surreal story about their encounter. During the film, he dresses her up with a “mantón” imitating Virgin Mary’s veil, and finishes the scene by carrying her as a crucifix down the platform, evoking catholic imagery. He criticizes the way in which society has objectified her, while simulating a conversation between two women (cross-dressed Ocaña and Marilyn).In the late 1970s, the advertising agency for Langnese “Lintas Hamburg” drew the famous image of Marilyn Monroe wearing a white dress (from the 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch” directed by Billy Wilder) in an advertisement for frozen liquor chocolates. The German title of the 1959 Marilyn Monroe film “Some like it hot” (“Manche mögen’s heiß”) was used as a play on words for the Langnese advertisement campaign “Manche mögen’s Eis” (“Some like ice cream”).
The “mantón de Manila”, is an accessory often seen in Ocaña’s cross-dressing performances, photographs, paintings and sculptures. Ocaña‘s nudity, together with the lightness and image of the shawl, create a “trashy” and “kitsch” aesthetic considered nowadays characteristic of the artist‘s work. The “mantones de Manila” are one of Ocaña’s favorite and quintessential “drag” elements. The one presented in the exhibition was owned by Ocaña and has been kindly sent on loan by his family; it is very similar to the one he wore for the performance at Brandenburg Gate.The Filipino colonial origin of the “mantones” was appropriated into Spanish 18th-century fashion and quickly became a mainstream piece that symbolized femininity. It is still found nowadays in traditional contexts of Flamenco, and Andalusian fashion and culture.
These photographs show several people standing on metallic viewing platforms like the ones at the Brandenburg Gate where Ocaña’s performance took place. These platforms were located at several points alongside the Wall in the West Berlin side. They were mainly used by tourists and visitors, but also by official state members or guests of the Federal Republic of Germany or the West Berlin Senate to get an overview of the border strip on the East.
In this film, Ocaña plays the role of a family mother who is married to a Spanish army officer. The story revolves around the father, who is tormented by the attraction he feels towards his son. „Silencis“ was censored by the Spanish government until the film won several awards at the 33rd Berlinale and internationally, it was shown there at “Atelier Am Zoo” on February 26 1983. It was acclaimed for its aesthetic value and for commenting on the silence of military repression. As explained by Xavier-Daniel Ocaña never saw the film because he died the same year it was released.Xavier-Daniel (Barcelona 1953) had to work in a challenging environment during the dictatorship. He used cultural and creative industries as a medium to promote freedom, equality, and LGBTQI+ rights through his national and international connections. Forced to live in exile in France, he organized screenings of censored films forbidden by the Spanish dictatorship.
This drawing by pen is one of the other traces left by Ocaña after passing through Berlin. It was sketched when he met Gregorio Ortega Coto (Morocco 1946) at the bar „Anderes Ufer“. The encounter between Ocaña and Gregorio represents a moment of spontaneous friendship in the midst of censorship, persecution and exile for many spanish queers:
“I met Ocaña in 1979, when he came to present his film at the festival, at the Berlinale. One Sunday in February (25.02.1979), at the „Anderes Ufer“ bar, which means “other shore” [men] with large windows through which you could see everything that was happening inside, I heard someone speaking in an Andalusian accent. I was an immigrant, my parents were Andalusian, in short, it gave me great joy to hear “Andaluz” and it seems to me that I was the one who contacted him, … There, in the café, while we talked and laughed, he drew me on a notepad, the kind used around here. I still have the drawing. It was a very, very magical encounter!”Gregorio Ortega Coto. Published in the Ocaña online archive “La Rosa del Vietnam. Archivo Ocañí”.
“Self-portrait with passport in memory of Felix Nussbaum”, painting by Gregorio Ortega Coto, 1995
In this painting, Gregorio takes inspiration from a piece by one of his favorite artists, Felix Nussbaum, and from the 1992 and 1993 fascist arson attacks on Turkish families’ houses in Mölln and Solingen.
Gregorio Ortega is portrayed in both exhibited pieces: “Selbstbildnis mit Paß in Erinnerung an Felix Nussbaum” and “Portrait of Gregorio” by Ocaña. Gregorio is a Spanish immigrant who moved to West Berlin in 1972 to seek a new path away from the social and political persecution of the Spanish dictatorship. He has published several novels, but his creative work also includes paintings, some of which are in the Schwules Museum’s archive.
As seen in the images in the book displayed in the showcase, Ocaña participated in the first demonstration for LGBTQI+ rights on June 25th, 1977, organized by the Front d‘Alliberament Gai de Catalunya (FAGC “Gay Liberation Front of Catalonia”). Ocaña‘s participation in demonstrations was another way of using his presence and performances to reclaim public spaces for minorities such as the queer community. However, his cross-dressing did not please the organizers, or some participants of the demonstration, who wanted to show a more serious and socially accepted image in line with heteronormative perspectives.
Photographs on “International Homosexual Liberation Day”, 1978
To the cry of „Llibertat sexual!“ (“Sexual freedom!”), Ocaña joined a second demonstration on June 25th 1978 walking down Las Ramblas. In his words in „Ocaña, Retrat Intermitent“, these demonstrations were „for the fucked up and marginalized people“ and he always expresses great solidarity for „transvestites, whores and faggots“. This scene is also captured in three photographs of Pepe Encinas, presented in the exhibition. The demonstration takes place after Ocaña and Nazario’s release from prison, who had been kept captive for two days after an attack on them by the police next to the terrace of the Opera Café. This attack is portrayed in an interview with both of them in issue 117 of Interviú magazine, where Ocaña poses with his naked body next to his paintings to show his injuries and denounce police violence.
During the second half of the 20th century, being homosexual or transgender in Spain was considered a crime, as defined by the 1954 fascist modification of the law “Ley de vagos y maleantes“ (“Vagrants and Rogues Law”) which targeted “homosexuals” for the first time as antisocial. The subsequent “Ley sobre peligrosidad y rehabilitación social” (“Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation Law”) from 1970 was reformulated to include “those [men] who undertake homosexual acts”, considering them “individuals declared of dangerous condition”. It was only in 1995 that the homophobic law was finally repealed. These laws are comparable to those in §175 of the Strafgesetzbuch (“Criminal Code”) in Germany.
Ocaña, el Fuego Infinito – Theater play
The play „Ocaña, el Fuego Infinito“ (“Ocaña, the Endless Fire”), by Andrés Ruiz López (Sevilla 1928 – Murcia 2009) is based on the death of Ocaña. It was awarded the “Calderón de la Barca” honors in 1987, and was published in 1989. It premiered outside of Spain, at the Teatro Nacional de La Habana in Havana, Cuba, in 1994. Ocaña has been a benchmark and inspiration for countless artists, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in exile. Andrés Ruiz, also of Andalusian origin, emigrated to Switzerland, where he lived and wrote for decades. His works were censored in Spain and he himself was imprisoned for 6 months for “illegal propaganda” during one of his visits to his homeland.
Ocaña at the Neuköllner Oper, Berlin
There are more recent examples in which the life and figure of Ocaña is brought to the stage. In 2018, Marc Rosich and Marc Sambola presented “Ocaña, Königin Der Ramblas” in Berlin, at the Neuköllner Oper, with German actor Denis Fischer playing Ocaña. The play was performed again in 2022, but this time the role of Ocaña was played by Catalan actor Joan Vázquez.
Rafael M. Mérida Jiménez describes Ocaña in his book “Voces, Ecos y Distorsiones” as “one of the best well-known and most ignored Spanish plastic creators of the 20th century’s last quarter”. Ocaña is known nowadays mostly for his performances and films, rather than for his paintings and paper maché sculptures. In “Ocaña. 1973-1983: acciones, actuaciones, activismo” (“Ocaña. 1973-1983: actions, performances, activism”), queer philosopher Paul B. Preciado refers to Ocaña’s performances and life as a “contrasexual practice” since they do not reproduce the norms of what the sex-gender system establishes. In paintings such as “Untitled (Corazón de Jesús Marica)” (“Heart of Faggot Jesus” 1982) the artist “queers” portraits of catholic figures,which also the case of “La Inmaculada de las Pollas” (“The Immaculate of the Cocks” 1976), a Virgin Mary is surrounded by penises.Preciado, Paul B. (2011) in: Ocaña. 1973-1983: acciones, actuaciones, activismo. Ediciones Polígrafa. Barcelona. (Kurator: Pedro G. Romero)Rafael M. Mérida Jiménez (2018): Ocaña. Voces, Ecos y distorsiones. Barcelona.
The last time Ocaña visited his hometown, Cantillana, he participated in the “Semana de la Juventud” (“Youth Week”) carnival, for which he prepared a sun costume full of paper fringes glued to a Lycra suit. During the parade, his costume caught fire by accident, which caused him severe burns; and several days later, he died in hospital in Sevilla on September 18th, 1983.
00:24-
Ocaña: Ah Marilyn… How cold it is in Germany! How cold! So cold! Seeing your face, for me, it’s formidable. Oh! My French!
(laughs)
You remind me, for you are so sensual, … it’s incredible to see you in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Not a communist, no! I, I’m an anarchist! I love freedom! I love beauty, aah!
(Ocaña shouts, there is bang, a scream and laughter)
01:04-
Marilyn, don’t you know Andalucia? Magnificent! Incredible!
Society has used you as an object of consumption! You, you are beautiful as dawn! Beautiful as the light… of my eyes!
But I am a marginal Andalusian.
(laughs and giggles)
I’m mad! I’m very cold! Germany, terrible. Ah! (laughs) I can’t go on, I can’t go on, my theatre is lost! … It gets lost in the Parisian night.
But, seeing you reminds me of her, I am an outcast woman!
(opens a fan)
Oh! Terrible! Terrible! Terrible! Terrible!
Shall I sing you a song?
Because I haven’t met Marilyn Monroe, only on newspapers and such, like you
2:21
And you are beautiful as the dawn,
the madness of my eyes I’m losing, I am
and the nights I say it’s going to be
but you are the roses from the sky, and you are not made of… paper (audience laughs)
You have to see, you have to see, you have to see in the nights of the lands of mine
I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m completely crazy
I don’t know, I don’t know who has brought me here to Berlin
to lose, to lose my mind
to lose, to lose my mind
I don’t know, I don’t know, la la la la la la la la la la
Oh little girl! Oh little girl!
And in the eyes that I take you inside
Aaahhh my feelings,
Marilyn I love you and I love you
Marilyn I love you and I love you….
03:35
And what do you say woman, that have you come from the South?
And for what, to Berlin? To see if you tell the Germans that inside…, that there is a lot of fire, and you are not cold.
What do you say? Yes?
I don’t remember! Ah, of course. Yes, yes, yes, yes. (laughs)
Yes? Ahh! You’re crazy, you’re crazy.
Well, look! Hey, girl, Ocaña, come here…! Girl! Ah, la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la, …
04:17
Sure, yes, I don’t remember.
I’ve come from a village, you know? I’ve come to do my chores in the city.
Tuti tuti tuti…
The bourgeois… Oh, the French bourgeois, Marilyn, how they are… Look Marilyn, you know… Do you know how much I suffer in this country? Do you know how bad I suffer in France, girl? You don’t know. You don’t know how I suffer, my child. You don’t know the sadness I have at night.
Marilyn, I… cry, cry, cry, cry… a lot. So much, so much!
4:50
Ah,… Ah. Ooh, Ooh! (laughter)
(Ocaña cries, murmurs and sniffs)
5:32
Night and day, night and day I see myself suffering from the same situation
Because the kisses, the kisses of a woman, who loves the entire world
and takes away the eyes, and takes away the eyes
Oh, her suffering
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know what I have to do to live
Damn jewel you’re crazy and you’re going to turn me into it, too!
You don’t know what to do, you’re crazy!
(Shouting)
06:29
Are you leaving?
Marilyn, your life… is a torment to me.
Commercials use you. They use your cut-out for money.
But I’m a terrible woman, lost, lost, very lost…
I remember as a child, that one day I was…, I was caught in the village making love with a fourteen year old boy. They called me a paedophile, they imprisoned me, they spoke badly about me, I was thrown out of the church… It was… Ah! Horrible… What’s wrong with you?
Ocaña! What are you doing?
Baby, I don’t remember, eh! I don’t remember.
Ah! I throw the flower to the communists, because they are terribly alone… In Berlin North, in Berlin South-West (asking the audience) How is it? (the audience laughs and talks)
I threw him the red flower, because it is the meaning of love, do you understand?
Because it is terribly lonely. Understand?
But, in Germany here there’s a lot of… freedom, you know? Very sophisticated, but one is poor. Do you understand?
Then I leave with her, I cry, cry, cry, cry, … Finally I take the cut-out. It’s just a cut-out, Marilyn doesn’t exist. No, she doesn’t exist.
Comedy, actor. No, no, no, no, no, no, …! You’re an actor! You want… You want her. You’re misogynistic. Understand? She only follows the sound, you follow the sound alone. Actor, actor!
Aah! (laughs)
08:35
She’s gone from life forever
On the roads, on the roads of spring,
Ocaña is a little boy
who cries and sings through his eyes and mouth,
But he doesn’t want to feel the betrayal of the people
because… I’m crazy
Cries and laughs inside
but she’s completely crazy
take away the cut-out,
it’s not worth anything
So that anyone…
SOURCES
Ajuntament de Barcelona (Ed.) (2011): Ocaña. 1973-1983: acciones, actuaciones, activismo. Ediciones Polígrafa. Barcelona. (Curator: Pedro G. Romero).
Espaliú, Pepe: Libro de Andrés. Un Cuento Del Ayer. In: Alcaide, Jesús (Ed.) (2018): La Imposible verdad: textos 1987-1993. Madrid. La Bella Varsovia. p. 124-125.
Fundación Provincial de Artes Plásticas Rafael Botí (Ed.) (2016): La gran primavera andaluza de Ocaña. Antología de la obra pictórica de José Pérez Ocaña 1947-1983. Córdoba.
Griñolo, Isaías; Orihuela, Antonio (2018): Camilo – és perillós abocar-se. Biblioteca Secreta. Barcelona.Moreno, Juan J. (2013): Ocaña. La memoria del Sol.
Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo (1985): Ocaña. Pinturas. Madrid, diciembre, 1985. Exhibition Catalogue. (Texts by Ignacio Zabala, curator: María José Wynn)
Naranjo-Ferrari, José (2013): Ocaña, artista y mito contracultural, análisis de la figura y legado artístico de José Pérez Ocaña (1947-1983) como testimonio y producto sociocultural de la transición española. Universidad de Sevilla.
Nazario (2016): La vida cotidiana del dibujante underground. Editorial Anagrama. Barcelona.
Nazario (2018): Sevilla y la Casita de las Pirañas. Editorial Anagrama. Barcelona
Pérez Pedrals, Pere (Ed.) (2007-): La Rosa del Vietnam. Archivo Ocañí (http://larosadelvietnam.blogspot.com)
Rafael M. Mérida Jiménez (2018): Ocaña. Voces, Ecos y distorsiones. Barcelona