STEPHANIE MERCEDES
Stephanie Mercedes is an uncategorized Queer Latinx artist who choreographs large-scale performances and installations based in sound. Mercedes transforms weapons into musical installations and works of art and excavates missing violent histories. Mercedes has exhibited and performed at the Bronx Museum, the Queens Museum, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, and the National Gallery of Art. She has been funded by George Soro's Open Society Foundation, Light Works, NALAC, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, WPA, The DC Commission for the Arts, the GLB Memorial Foundation, the Warhol Foundation, and the Clarvit Fellowship. Mercedes has been an artist-in-residence at VisArts, Halcyon Art Labs, the Bronx Museum, Montgomery College, Christopher Newport University, SOMA, Lugar a Dudas, Largo das Artes, La Ira de Dios, and The Nicholson Project (forthcoming). Mercedes is currently producing an opera, Never in Our Image, a three-part Queer gun destruction performance, with CulturalDC
Sonic Fracture, 2023
Audio, Melted Bullets, Mixed Metals (Aluminum, Brass, Steel), Cast Honey, Cast Soap
“Sonic Fracture” is drawn from sounds made by the artist throwing bullet casings into her crucible. Different pitches and tones are pulled from this sound and are transformed into a composition. Cast forms made through this process - melted weapons turned into art - reflect the sounds and are scattered on the floor.
This work was also inspired by a cemetery the artist passes on the way to her studio. Scattered around the cemetery are flowers in multiple states of decay. Similarly, this installation has scattered flowers, liberty bells, and musical instruments in various states of growth and decomposition. By sonically and visually fluctuating between abstraction and figuration the work alludes to both rituals of mourning and the queer state of being.
“...the hostility frequently expressed against...queer individuals is a function of fear of the undecidability of the (queer) body.” (Nancy J. Hirschmann)
