''The Nine Confinements'', also known as ''The Deprivation of Liberty'' is a conceptual,

endurance art Endurance (also related to sufferance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from a ...

and performative work of critical and

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or c ...

content by artist

Abel Azcona Abel Azcona (born 1 April 1988) is a Spanish artist, specializing in performance art. His work includes installations, sculptures, and video art. He is known as the "'' enfant terrible''" of Spanish contemporary art. His first works dealt with ...

. The artwork was a sequence of performances carried out between 2013 and 2016. All of the series had a theme of

deprivation of liberty Imprisonment is the restraint of a person's liberty, for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is "false imprisonment". Imprisonment does not necessari ...

. The first in the series was performed by Azcona in 2013 and named ''Confinement in Search of Identity''. The artist was to remain for sixty days in a space built inside an art gallery of Madrid, with scarce food resources and in total darkness. The performance was stopped after forty-two days for health reasons and the artist hospitalised. Azcona created these works as a reflection and also a discursive interruption of his own mental illness, being one of the recurring themes in Azcona's work. Another of the confinements lasted nine days in the

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of th ...

Biennale. Azcona remained inside a garbage container strategically located in the center of the Biennial as a criticism of the artist's own gestation and the market of contemporary art itself. One of the last projects of the series was ''Black Hole''. Performed in 2015, Azcona again remained locked in a small space without light and poor food in the same central art gallery in Madrid. On this occasion different unknown guests shared the confinement with the artist. Azcona was unaware of the guests origins and could not see them. Visitors of the art gallery were told of the experience by those entering and leaving the confinement with to the artist. All projects were curated and documented from the point of view of the deprivation of liberty including deprivation of food, water, electricity or contact with the outside.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nine Confinements Or The Deprivation Of Liberty Performances

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