Mercedes Maga Estrella de la Mañana
Let’s suppose there are multiple lives living in a body. Lives that live momentarily through gestures, gestures transcribing, scratching language on the surface.
Almost a century ago, in an empty ballroom with mirroring ceilings, somewhere in central Europe, right before dawn, a masculine figure finds himself freed. He is traversing the floor, spinning in a forgotten tutu, and his spins are not only gestures but also music. Meanwhile, marks of his movements are imprinted on the reflecting ceiling. Suddenly the room seems full again, inhabited by friends, ambiguous characters from the past and the future. All mirrored upside down.
The masculine figure realises then that each character –regardless of their gender, generation, or coordinates – has something from him, a common red thread that ties them together. As he observes the body of bodies spinning, and therefore dancing, he also realises that transformation is possible.
To capture this moment one could only paint it. Paint it by spinning it, by wiping it off a ballroom floor.
Like a kind of script, the paintings are articulated further as Mnemonic Visuals , which Mercedes or the masculine figure have been using throughout their artistic practice as scores for their performances.
On the surface of the canvas, dancing their way through opacity and transparency, past and present come together in a gestural ball –a collaboration of bodies and essence – which again points towards performativity.
Similarly, the drawings emerge on paper: a kind of dancing writing, which seems to carry a timeless, non linear message.
To dance with desire.
Mercedes Azpilicueta (1981) is a visual and performance artist from Buenos Aires living and working in Amsterdam. Her artistic practice brings together various characters from the past and the present, who manifest as voices, shapes, texts, traces, and memories into her multi- layered works. Calling herself a “dishonest researcher,” Azpilicueta navigates through multiple references and fields of knowledge, from art history to popular music, from literature to street culture, falling in love with dissident figures and trajectories—feminist, queer, migrant, exiled individuals—who haunt her scripts, performances, and videos. Yet, her work never indulges into cold reverence or archival fascination. By engaging the body with all its flaws and potentials— her own body, that of her muses and collaborators, that of the spectators, but also fantasized ones—Azpilicueta embraces its fragility as well as its capacity for care and resistance.
She was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2015–16, and received the Pernod Ricard Fellowship in 2017. Solo exhibitions include Kunstverein Göttingen (2023); Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2022); Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz (2022); Gasworks, London (2021); CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge (2021); Museion, Bolzano/Bozen (2020); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2019); CentroCentro, Madrid (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2018); and Móvil, Buenos Aires (2015); this year she will present a solo show at Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía – C3A, Córdoba. Azpilicueta was nominated for the Prix de Rome 2021.