Mercedes Azpilicueta

Mercedes Azpilicueta - Poet Rixt and other women of Frisia [Rixt the poet and other Frisian Women]

Biografía del Artista: Mercedes Azpilicueta is an Argentinian artist currently based in the Netherlands. Her work is characterized by the use of different media, including performance, drawing, sculpture and video, to explore themes such as identity, femininity and representation. In her work, Azpilicueta focuses on the exploration of voice, body and language, using a variety of techniques and materials to create pieces that move between the abstract and the figurative. Many of her works have a strong performative dimension, inviting the viewer to participate in creating the meaning of the work. Azpilicueta has received several awards and recognitions throughout her career. In 2019, she won the Gasworks Art Prize in London, which included a three-month artist residency in the city. In 2017, she was selected to participate in the artist-in-residence programme at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, and in 2018 she was awarded the Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst, one of the most prestigious art awards in the Netherlands. Azpilicueta’s style is characterised by her multidisciplinary approach and her ability to combine seemingly disparate elements to create works that question hegemonic narratives and gender stereotypes. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and Latin America, and her innovative and provocative style has made her one of the most interesting and relevant artists of her generation.

De Rebelse Lusthof deals with the long history of the Oranjewoud estate, initially recorded from a largely colonial perspective. Azpilicueta recreates this history by combining past and present, fiction and reality, and by making new comparisons and adding elements. The result is a revised historiography in which people and plants are intertwined, and in which women in particular play a much more important role than in the traditional history of Oranjewoud. Fruits and herbs, work and leisure, castellanas and knotted cloths, baroque and cosmic connections, field workers, writers, poets, rebels and royalty coexist anarchically in Mercedes Azpilicueta's De Rebelse Lusthof (2022), a garden that may or may not have existed to tell its own story. In this tapestry, Maria Louise van Hessen-Kassel (1688 – 1765) appears as a central character. Maria Louise van Hessen-Kassel was the Princess of Orange, ancestor of the present royal house. She is depicted in the tapestry with her children Anna Charlotte Amalia and William IV. After the death of her husband, Maria Louise became regent for her young son.