Mercedes Azpilicueta

Mercedes Azpilicueta’s artistic practice stands in defiance against rigid, linear historical narratives by foregrounding dissident and dissonant voices. Azpilicueta labels herself a ‘dishonest researcher’ and creates performative and sculptural installations formed in conversation with myths and legends found in libraries and archives and taking inspiration from Neo-Baroque art history, speculative and fictional Latin literature and contemporary popular culture. Azpilicueta’s approach involves focusing on specific figures from history to uncover and vocalise buried perspectives, often shedding light on South America’s queer and migrant communities and the legacy of its colonial past. Formally and conceptually, Azpilicueta’s practice embraces anachronisms. She couples industrialised production techniques with craft-based, inherited techniques, for example, traditional weaving with combining contemporary textile development technologies, to create pieces that are both inherently tied to specific histories but also implanted with contemporary cultural references.