Mercedes Azpilicueta
TALES OF DISORDER
Galería Pelaires, Mallorca
Jan 26 - Mar 14, 2023
Mercedes Azpilicueta (born in La Plata, Argentina in 1981) is a visual and performance artist living and working in Amsterdam and Buenos Aires. 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 resistance and care.
Most specifically known for her performance and language-based works, Mercedes Azpilicueta’s practice has evolved in the recent years into exploring the theatrical possibilities of sculpture and installation. However, the objects that she produces should not be taken for granted, as they always bear the potential of being activated in various ways. They could be translated as scores, set designs, props, mnemonic devices or records — disguised as sculptures. They often take different functions according to their context of apparition and travel merrily from a work to another. The fabrication of these objects often involves “poor”, craft-based or handmade techniques that are often associated with the domestic work of women and with subaltern knowledge, such as sewing, embroidering or dying. The materials are either recycled or natural (latex, leather, wool, silk, wax) and add another layer of stories to the objects, that of the circulation of resources and knowledge often acquired through the violent exploitation of humans and nature.
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
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.
DiscoverWe’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.
DiscoverDrag