2018
Bilingual edition, Spanish/English.
Texts: Laura Hakel, Virginie Bobin, Mariano Blatt
Graphic Design: Eduardo Rey
Translations: Kit Maude, Daniel Tunnard// Spanish Translations: Marcos Maier
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136 pages
Format: 20 x 24 cm
ISBN 978-987-1358-57-1
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The images and texts in this book provide an introduction to the performance
work that the artist Mercedes Azpilicueta presented in Body Birds, an exhibition
held at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires in 2018. The visual record
and the sketches of some of the works featuring in the exhibition are accompanied
by a curatorial essay by Laura Hakel, a dramaturgical essay by French writer and
curator Virginie Bobin recreating the artist’s symbolic world of reference, and a short
fiction by Argentinian poet Mariano Blatt.
‘Mercedes Azpilicueta’s works have the potency of a love letter found in a wardrobe,
a text wished for in the middle of the night, the yearning memory of a relative’s words.
They deal with personal emotions familiar to us all. A long-distance call, an email
that arrives just in time, a heart that beats like when we run for a bus that waits for us
to catch up. The fade-out of the reggaeton of the van pulling away from the traffic light,
the street trader’s words and catchphrases and singsong calls. Her work investigates
—through language, the body and what we hear—all that we take from the outside
and all that settles in us, becoming something personal, but also something that
connects us. Her voice is the one that listens attentively to what has passed through
us in everyday life and reassures us: “trust me sister, those words have to do
something, even now.” ’
Laura Hakel
