Mercedes Azpilicueta
Details tapestry ‘Potatoes, Riots and Other Imaginaries’
Mercedes Azpilicueta (born 1981, La Plata, Argentina) is a visual and performance artist currently based between Amsterdam and Buenos Aires. Her practice epitomizes this narrative or “misue” of language enriched by symbolic and representational technologies that reimagine past worlds in today’s context. Her work critically interrogates identities and struggles entrenched by contemporary feminist, anti-racist, and class struggles, with an evident and, on occasions, ironic approach of decolonial feminism. Her installations unfold as expansive theatrical works around textile forms, employing tapestry as a sculptural complex offering metaphors for re-examining history from overlooked or obscured perspectives.
Azpilicueta’s work weaves together characters from across time—voices, shapes, texts, and traces that converge into rich, layered compositions. Describing herself as a "dishonest researcher," she moves freely through a sea of references, from art history and literature to pop culture and street life, often gravitating toward dissident figures: feminist, queer, migrant, or exiled individuals whose stories enliven her scripts, performances, and videos. However, her work steers clear of mere archival fixation, resisting a passive regard in favor of a more dynamic, irreverent engagement.
Renowned for her performances and video art, Mercedes Azpilicueta has ventured into sculpture and installation, crafting objects that come alive as scores, props, or theatrical set pieces ready to be activated. These works often employ "poor," craft-based techniques like sewing, embroidering, or dyeing—methods linked to women’s domestic labor and subaltern knowledge. Crafted from recycled and natural materials like latex, leather, and silk, Azpilicueta’s sculptures are steeped in history, echoing the movement of resources and knowledge shaped by human and ecological exploitation.
Details tapestry ‘Potatoes, Riots and Other Imaginaries’
Potatoes, Riots, and Other Imaginaries
PrixdeRome, 2021
Potatoes, Riots, and Other Imaginaries is a sculptural tapestry where themes of feminism, food economies, textile workers, and women-led global rights movements enlivened by the ironic use of Baroque language. At the heart of the work is the artist’s exploration of the 1917 Potato Riots in Amsterdam’s Jordaan neighborhood, where working-class women rose in protest against wartime food shortages.Life-sized and encircled by work clothes, tools, utensils, and the soft murmur of conversations, the tapestry links past and present struggles, in a visceral, immersive encounter that please the eye with its colors, textures, and never-ending storytelling. It speaks of housewives, maids, and nurses engaged in the quiet, often invisible labor of care and maintenance—work long associated with women. Yet, it also draws on the energy of contemporary movements, such as Latin America’s #NiUnaMenos protests, pushing against gender-based violence. This work reconsiders the dynamics between domestic and public spaces, revealing the socio-economic value of domestic labor and reminding us of the collective power of action in shaping change.
This vast collage incorporates archival photographs from the TextielMuseum, National Archives, and Jordaan Museum, mingled with Azpilicueta’s own. "The past resonates in everyday life," she reflects. "With this textile work, layered with personal memories, I sought to embody and soften that history." Surrounding the tapestries, objects tied to historical memory are verging with utilitarian, contemporary items, challenging the notion of luxury within these woven material and complexity of form forming an ever-shifting fabric of collective memory.
In this collaborative endeavor, the artist brings forth voices from both distant and intimate pasts, in many forms of solidarity, from professional ties to deeply personal connections. She revisits histories and traditions from alternative perspectives, unearthing forgotten textile techniques that resonate with the legacies of domestic and female labor, in an act of artistic revival and quiet resistance.
Through a transgressive approach, she seeks out subversive and contested figures from the past—queer, feminist, exiled, and forgotten voices—who populate her videos, sculptures, and textiles. Her work exists in the cracks of geopolitical margins, in spaces where our present was shaped before it even began to unfold. Azpilicueta’s art reflects on the histories that, though unacknowledged, have always been there—waiting to be brought into the light, as though constituting a hidden thread that binds us to a forgotten past.
Mercedes Azpilicueta, “The Lieutenant-Nun Is Passing: An Autobiography of Katalina, Antonio, Alonso and More" (2021). Collection of ICA Miami. Commissioned and produced by Gasworks. Photo by Andy Keate.
“The Lieutenant-Nun Is Passing: An Autobiography of Katalina, Antonio, Alonso and More” (2021) presents the artist’s retelling of the “Lieutenant-Nun” Catalina de Erauso, one of the most legendary and controversial figures of the Spanish Golden Age. Erauso escaped from religious life in Spain during the early 17th century and traveled to the New World, where she lived under various male identities and became a ruthless conqueror in the service of the Spanish Empire.
Lady’s Dreams or Stop RIght There Gentlemen!
In Lady’s Dream, she draws on the Argentinian legend of Lucia Miranda—a 16th-century European woman captured by Indigenous Argentinians, later reimagined through a feminist lens by 19th-century writer Eduarda Mansilla. Azpilicueta emphasizes history's non-linear nature, rewriting Argentina’s official narrative to amplify forgotten literary voices. Using collage, surreal humor, and myth, she fills the space with animated characters that disrupt and challenge the dominant sense of time from Mansilla’s era.Details of Lady’s Dreams or Stop RIght There Gentlemen!
back