Mercedes Azpilicueta: Bestiary of Tonguelets

Mercedes Azpilicueta’s expansive project, ‘Bestiary of Tonguelets’ was initiated with curator Virginie Bobi and unfolds as the artist’s yet largest ongoing endeavour. Rooted in a script for an unrealized performance, the project employs local, obsolete knowledges, “neobarroso” poems, and failed translations to craft a grotesque choir of characters honoring chaos and excess. Azpilicueta pays homage to pre-modern knowledge practices disseminated among women, preceding suppression by capitalism, religion, and modern medicine. Inspired by encounters in Paris, Madrid’s Botanical Garden, and Bolzano’s magical forests, the project weaves a new embodied cartography through storytelling, fables, and ancient rituals.