Visual and performance artist Mercedes Azpilicueta (Argentina, 1981) developed a large-scale installation featuring a tapestry measuring 3 x 12 metres for her nomination for the Prix de Rome 2021. The tapestry intertwines women's protest and labour, both past and present.
Women's protest and labour, both past and present, are the focus of the large-scale work that Azpilicueta developed in the TextielLab. She took the Amsterdam Potato Riot of 1917 as her starting point. During the First World War, there was a huge shortage of potatoes. Women in the Jordaan area rioted en masse and tried to storm a ship carrying potatoes for the army. Azpilicueta combined images of the riot with pictures of women's protest and labour from other times and places as well as from her own history.
Azpilicueta created a collage from historical and contemporary images and wove them together to form a whole. She drew on archival material, books and images from her own history in Argentina. She mentally linked images of women’s labour in the Tilburg textile industry to working in the TextielLab. The production process with Peskens is thus also featured in the tapestry.
For the design of ‘Potatoes, riots and other imaginaries’, Azpilicueta worked with Peskens on the wide loom, which has a weaving width of 3.5 metres. The large work contains numerous detailed scenes that required great skill and knowledge to translate into a fabric. Several narrow sections of the scenes were woven as a test to see how the image that Azpilicueta had in mind would look as a jacquard weave.
The large tapestry was mounted on a frame that gives the fabric three-dimensionality. It ripples to the ground before lying flat like a runner. Azpilicueta chose this presentation as a means of immersing visitors in the work. This was a challenge in itself, however, as the woven fabric could not sag or wrinkle.
Mercedes Azpilicueta (Argentina, 1981) is a visual and performance artist from La Plata who lives and works in Amsterdam. In her work, she links decolonial feminist, sometimes speculative, histories with contemporary popular culture. She depicts these histories in performances and installations that combine garments and tapestries with vocal arrangements. She uses both 'outdated’ crafts and contemporary industrialised techniques.
‘Susurros Barrocos | Barockes Flüstern’, Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, November 2022 – March 2023
‘C4’, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, May – September 2022
‘Prix de Rome 2021’, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, November 2021 – April 2022
‘Secrets of making #2 – Artists and designers in the TextielLab’, TextielMuseum Tilburg, May 2022 - June 2023
