Meet Stephanie Mercedes | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie Mercedes and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, let’s start by talking about what inspires you?
I am inspired by rage. To be queer today is to be in a constant stage of rage. Art is my outlet. In spanish the word “aguda” is sharpness. I think and feel the word in my practice. Many of my sculptures include highly sharpened metallic points, delicate, vulnerable and yet violent, maybe even weapon-like. The sharpness of these metallic sculptures are the embodiment of my vulnerable rage, a feeling I return back to again and again in my life and in my work.

As a sculptor mostly working in metal, rage is also essential to my process. I melt, pound, forge and hammer weapons into sonic sculptures, strange forms and irregular musical instruments. The intense physically is deeply cathartic. But I try to have a conversation with the metal. Never “forcing” it. A question a student asked me stays with me: “What if metal, (itself) never wanted to be a weapon?”

My most recent work “we were treated like numbers rather than stars” was recently installed at the Walters Museum. The work is composed of hundreds of bullet casings hammered into bell like shapes. The installation is spiralic, with multiple horizontal and vertical spirals coming in and out of focus as the viewer moves around the work. I was thinking about the sublime when I made the work. To be all encompassed by something larger than yourself. I also wanted to question the ethics of memorials. Is it ethical to equate one life with one one object? But ultimately, the work is up to the interpretation of the viewer.

I am also inspired by clubbing. Clubbing is a form of survival.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My work is a strange combination of many mediums: metal, sculpture, installation, sound, experimental opera, performance and recently techno. I have been fortunate to work with DJ Kelly, who has been composing techno beats for many of my performances and exhibitions. “I bite the brass between my teeth,” a show I had in Miami last year at Broward College, the entire exhibit was made with melted bullets (brass). Part of the soundscape for the show included techno beats composed by DJ Kel with the sounds of the sculptures. Techno has this combination of liberation you feel on the dance floor, with rage that I am really attracted to. I am currently working on a series of experimental power hammers I hope will be programed to create techno beats that will be exhibited at the Art Museum of the Americas in the spring. I recently been trying to make art that centralizes queer joy and liberation. The techno and dance music feel integral to that.

I am incredibly stubborn which is probably why/how I am an artist. Once I get a crazy idea into my head, I have to make it happen, and will keep on pitching the idea around (etc) until I get the support I need to make it possible. I love working with other people, and love it when people around me make me question my world view (or just view of art in general). I hope to perform more, find support for big ideas, and continue to find ways to be an experimental artist. I challenging aspect of being a sculptor is I make huge sculptures and then finding a place to keep them is difficult. I would love to find someone to help me keep the pieces touring.

A work I would love to exhibit again, is “desplazamiento” is a large scale installation that is a pond. The work is reflecting on the Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983), a dark period of time that was marked by the disappearance of artists, queers, mathematicians, anyone who spoke out against the regime or was “other.” In the installation, negatives of those who disappeared fall from the ceiling of the gallery into the water. Like the bodies that were once thrown into the Rio de la Plata during the notorious death flights, the negatives slowly displace the sea.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I love sitting at the outdoor cafe at the Pérez Museum to watch the water. The sculpture park right next to it is a beautiful place to bike. The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse has an incredible collection of Anselm Kiefer’s. El espacio 23 is a gem for contemporary art, I have never seen such a stunning collection of contemporary art and I love how industrial the space is. I also love going kayaking with manatees in Biscayne and the goodwill in little Havana has some great finds.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My stepmom, a Argentinian curator and art historian introduced me to contemporary art. She took me to my first contemporary art museums, and made me realize being an artist was a potential career path (not a common realization for a teenager!) I would not be the artist I am today, without her. My bedroom was also her library. I read countless Artforums, and was radicalized by her collection of theory books which questioned a euro-centric understanding of art history. “Beyond the Fantastic” changed my life forever. “América invertida” by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres García is the covert, showing an inverted map of the Americas with Latin America on top. The book questions calls for a new understanding of Latin American art free from western art history.

“Acción del Encierro” by Argentine artist Graciela Carnevale was also introduced to me by my stepmothers collection. The artist invites the public to come into a gallery, and then locks them in and goes home to go to bed. The public must break the windows of the gallery to break free. The work was created in 1968 during which military general Juan Carlos Onganía took over democratically elected president Aturo Illia in a coup d’etat. The performance is a metaphor, it is up to the public (the people) to create political change.

Someone else who has made a big impact on me is experimental music composer and professor Thomas Delio. Delio decolonized my relationship with sound, and made me question what I considered to be, “good” vs “bad” sounds. Under his mentorship, I began to explore the sound of my process: destroying, transforming, recasting and melting weapons. “Never In Our Image” a queer gun destruction opera was born. Over the course of three acts, with a group of opera singers, contemporary dancers, percussionists, sound designers and metal workers, we responded and embodied the process of guns being cut into pieces, melted and recast into strange sonic sculptures. Saws, angle grinders, vices, furnaces and blow torches all became musical instruments. The percussionists I worked with in that opera, Jon Soleto, Maia Foley and John McGovern were also students of Delio’s. Delio also asked me to re-evaluate my relationship with silence. Something I try to also translate into my work with dancers, and in sculpture.

Website: https://www.stephaniemercedes.com

Instagram: @mercedes_theartist

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQHHpdhuXBRZnfC9GTZzLEQ

Image Credits
1. “we were treated like numbers rather than stars” Walters Museum
2. “we were tread like numbers rather than stars” Walters Museum
3. “I Hold You Close” Photographer: Amir Pourmand
4. “I Hold You Close” Photographer: Amir Pourmand
5. “Never In Our Image: Act 1” Photographer: Amir Pourmand
6. “Never In Our Image: Act 2” Photographer: Amir Pourmand
7. “Never In Our Image: Act 3” Photographer: Amir Pourmand
8. “Desplazamiento” Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery
9. “Desplazamiento” (detail) Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery