Mercedes Aquí

She is a visual artist, a photographer and a cultural negotiator. She was born in Argentina where she lived until she was eight years old. Due to the military dictatorship, her family had to resort to exile in Mexico. There, she achieved a Master´s Degree in Communication Sciences and Literature in the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico in the City of Toluca (UASLP for its initials in Spanish), State of Mexico. She started journalism by working as a reporter. Later, she entered into the area of press photography. She decided to abandon the journalism career to dedicate herself to the visual arts and to cultural management. The installation, performing acts, art-object, art relation and creation in an open studio have been a constant in her work in the last three years.

Independently, she coordinated photographic and journalistic projects: “El Chuzo”, the magazine of art and literature “Inside the Desert”. The cultural supplement, “Origin” and “Letters from the Desert” feature articles that deal with everyday life in arid zones. She has been promoter of various projects in the high Potosi plateau and the director of the Winter Cultural Festival of “Fire and Stars” since its first edition in Real of Fourteen. She directed the Studio of Creative Photography that took place in the UASLP Matehuala campus. In coordination with the Tourism Ministry of San Luis Potosi State and the Committee of Magic Towns, she tutored the Cultural Festival of “Magic Really Lives”. She organized the program “Libraries of the Desert of Wirikuta”. She coordinated the Tropical Project of Cancer, a Collective Mural in the desert that took place in “Fourteen” with the participation of the UASLP. Currently, she is collaborating with the Active 14 Collective, an organization of artists who work in the desert. She alternately lives between Coahuila and Real de Catorce, Mexico.

Statement

In the creative process, my language has had an evolution, starting from photography and leading to other visual arts. That evolution is continuing; it is the promoter of the primary impulses that guide me and that have taken me from personal experience to experience in society. I experiment with different disciplines; I do research on interpretation possibilities of reality and its relationship with the field or the information matrix. We live connected through technology, but in many cases, disconnected with our own selves. I seek to take the spectator to reflect on what reality, interpretation, control, emotions, illusion, separation, construction and destruction all are, and to halt in conscious observation. It matters to me to artistically tackle the collectivity space and the interpersonal relations, and thus be part of the process of weaving a resonance that will complete us.