Mercedes Azpilicueta
Las Mesas Danzantes
C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Sep 27 - Mar 2, 2025
Mercedes Azpilicueta
Mercedes Azpilicueta is a visual and performance artist known for her language-based works who calls herself a “dishonest researcher”. Through her manifold research work, from art history to popular music, from literature to street culture, she brings together various characters from the past and the present, and reflects on their dissident trajectories —feminist, queer, migrant, exiled— by imbedding their voices, shapes, texts, traces and memories into her multi-layered works. Far from indulging into cold reverence or archival fascination, her work successfully engages 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— she embraces its fragility as well as its capacity for resistance and care.
Azpilicueta’s practice has evolved recently into exploring the theatrical possibilities of sculpture and installation. Disguised as sculptures, her pieces should not be taken for granted, as they always bear the potential of being activated in various ways — as scores, set designs, props, mnemonic devices or records. Her artistic practice involves “poor”, craft-based techniques that are often associated with the domestic work of women and with subaltern knowledge, such as sewing, embroidering or dying. The materials used, either recycled or natural (latex, leather, wool, silk, wax) claim their own narrative: that of the circulation of resources and knowledge often acquired through the violent exploitation of humans and nature.
Selected Works
Potatoes, Riots, and Other Imaginaries
2021
Jacquard tapestry
352 x 1200 cm (138 19⁄32 x 472 7⁄16 inches)Ed. 3 + I AP
The Wise Octopus
2022
Vintage leather jacket, copper, shoes, wild silk, leather strings
The Lieutenant-Nun Is Passing: An Autobiography of Katalina, Antonio, Alonso and More
2021
Jacquard tapestry (Merino wool, cotton, lurex)
160 x 400 cm (63 x 157 15⁄32 inches)Ed. 3 + I AP
Untitled
2021
Mixed media
7 elementsEd.
The Dance that Shines
2024
Stainless steel, tulle, upcycled clothes, cotton thread, acrylic paint
Variable dimensions
Latex skins and pipes
2019
Natural latex
Un primer encuentro con Mercedes Maga Estrella de la Mañana III
2024
Mixed media on canvas
113 x 83 cm (44 1⁄2 x 32 11⁄16 inches)
Mama's Casting a Spell
2019
Single channel video, sound
0h 07' 54''Ed. 3 + I AP
Bestiaire of tonguelets, Act I, scene 1, 2, 3 and 4
2019
Natural linen, two-tone natural silk, thread
296 x 140 cm (116 17⁄32 x 55 1⁄8 inches)
The Captive
2020
Performance
0h 30' 00''
Soft Armour III (Micheline)
2018
Wool cloth dyed with natural dyes, handmade natural latex, thread
190 x 100 x 80 cm (74 13⁄16 x 39 3⁄8 x 31 1⁄2 inches)
The Captive: Here’s a Heart for Every Fate
2019
Jacquard Textile (wool and cotton)
157 x 300 cm (61 13⁄16 x 118 1⁄8 inches)Ed. 3
Lady’s Dreams or Stop right there gentlemen!
2019
Jacquard Textile (wool and cotton)
157 x 600 cm (61 13⁄16 x 236 7⁄32 inches)Ed. 3 + I AP
Cuerpos Pájaros (Body-Bodies)
2018
Synchronized three-channel video projection
0h 15' 00''Ed. 3
Hommage al reverso de Natività di San Giovanni Battista, Pontormo, 1526 (I)
2019
Wool felt, red oxide and caput mortuum natural dyes, hand-made dyed eco-latex, metal chains
Starfish & Amoeba
2020
Cotton, oak gall nuts, citric acid, ferrous sulphate, cord, thread
337 x 153 cm (132 11⁄16 x 60 1⁄4 inches)
Yegua-yeta-yuta
2018
Natural two-tone silk, stitched linen + Audio
380 x 150 cm (149 5⁄8 x 59 1⁄16 inches)
Dancing Scripts VIII
2024
Watercolor and ink on paper
29.5 x 22 cm (11 5⁄8 x 8 21⁄32 inches)
Installation
Las mesas danzantes, 2024
C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Photography: Rafael Carmona
Las mesas danzantes, 2024
C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Photography: Rafael Carmona
Las mesas danzantes, 2024
C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Photography: Rafael Carmona
Pensare come una montagna, 2024
GAMeC, Bergamo
Photography: Paolo Biava
Susurros Barrocos, 2022
Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf
Photography: Kai Werner Schmidt
Susurros Barrocos, 2022
Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf
Photography: Kai Werner Schmidt
Take a Breath, 2024
IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Tierra desnuda, cielo desnudo, 2023
Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen
Photography: Jens Gerber
, 2023
Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen
Photography: Jens Gerber
C4, 2022
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein
Photography: Stefan Altenburger
Prix de Rome, 2021
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
C4, 2022
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein
Photography: Stefan Altenburger
Bondage of Passions, 2021
Gasworks, London
Photography: Andy Keate
Bondage of Passions, 2021
Gasworks, London
Photography: Andy Keate
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, 2024
Barbican Art Gallery, London
Photography: Jemima Yong / © Barbican Art Galler
Bestiario de Lengüitas, 2020
MUSEION – Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bolzano, Bolzano
Cuerpos Pájaros, 2018
Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
11th Biennial d'Art Leandre Cristòfol, 2019
Centre d'Art la Panera, Lleida
Bestiario de Lengüitas, 2019
CentroCentro, Madrid
Bestiario de Lengüitas, 2019
CentroCentro, Madrid
Post-Opera, 2019
TENT, Rotterdam
Telling Untold Stories - Positions #5, 2019
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Telling Untold Stories - Positions #5, 2019
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Performance/Documentation/Presentation, 2020
LundsKonsthall, Lund
Bestiario de Lengüitas, 2021
CAC - Centre d’art contemporain, Brétigny
Photography: Aurélien Mole
News
Exhibitions
Mercedes Maga Estrella de la Mañana
BarcelonaMay 30 - Sep 7, 2024
Under the name Mercedes Maga Estrella de la Mañana, Argentinian artist Mercedes Azpilicueta presents a group of new works in Prats Nogueras Blanchard –encompassing painting, drawing and sculpture– that explore the idea of multiplicity within one’s self. Bringing together diverse characters from the past and present is a common gesture within the artist’s practice; the gesture of painting is a sounding board for the echo of the past. Mercedes Maga Estrella de la Mañana moves in a spiral, revisiting performance scores, textile and furniture sculptures, revealing traces of other lives, giving them new voices.
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Revelations on a shapeless sphere
FontetaJun 17 - Aug 28, 2022
For the second consecutive year, we are delighted to present a collaborative project between galleries Bombon, Galeria Joan Prats and NoguerasBlanchard. The proposal for this summer once again brings together artists from the three galleries and from different generations in an exhibition format that will be based on the exquisite corpse principle, with a text by poet Eduardo Escoffet written for the occasion.
Focusing on this act of collective exchange, during the summer of 2022, the artists invited to participate, the first of them Pere Noguera (La Bisbal del Ampurdán, Girona; 1941) , will be in charge of selecting the first group of artists, and so on in succession, until closing a cycle of exhibition proposals made up of works spanning different generations and imaginaries.
Chapter 1: Opening Saturday 25 June
Pere Noguera, Luis Gordillo, Ludovica Carbotta (Room 1)
Pere Noguera, Anna Dot, The Late Estate Broomberg & Chanarin (Room 2)
Chapter 2: Opening Saturday 16 July
Ludovica Carbotta, Muntadas, Francesco Arena (Room 1)
The Late Estate Broomberg & Chanarin, Jordi Mitjà, Rasmus Nilausen (Room 2)
Chapter 3: Opening Saturday 6 August
Francesco Arena, Victoria Civera, Perejaume (Room 1)
Ángela de la Cruz, Rasmus Nilausen, Lola Lasurt (Room 2)
Chapter 4: Opening Thursday 18 August
Perejaume, Pere Llobera, Ignacio Uriarte (Room 1)
Lola Lasurt, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Fernando Prats (Room 2)
c/ Empordà, 10, Fonteta, Girona
Jun: Friday to Sunday from 5 to 9pm
Jul and Aug: Monday to Sunday from 5 to 9pm
Katalina, Antonio, Alonso
MadridSep 9 - Nov 13, 2021
Taking the autobiography that Catalina de Erauso left in writing, in the words of Verónica Rossi, Azpilicueta carries out “an exercise in historiographical imagination that gives another twist to the succession of stories that construct the past”, weaving a work from memories, archives and imaginaries, rethinking history and breathing new life into dissident figures and trajectories of colonial history.
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Estar a la lluna
FontetaAug 7 - Sep 26, 2021
We’re delighted to present the second chapter of the joint project by Bombon, Galeria Joan Prats and NoguerasBlanchard, taking place in Fonteta, a small village in the Empordà region from June to September.
The exhibition, conceived in two chapters, brings together artists from three different generations. The proposal begins with a concept from the Empordà Parar la fresca (to take in fresh air) described by Josep Pla in the book Las Horas (The Hours), 1953.
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