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Report: Latitudes' participation in the festival TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW initiated by PUBLICS in Helsinki

 Fri, Oct 4 2019
Poster announcing the festival in a street in central Helsinki. Photo: Latitudes.

As partner organisation in the transdisciplinary festival ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’ initiated by PUBLICS, Latitudes' participation consisted in inviting Argentinian-born, Amsterdam-based artist Mercedes Azpilicueta, to perform at Club Kaiku on September 13, 2019.

Façade of Kaiku, Helsinki.

A day earlier, on September 12, 2019, Latitudes and Mercedes maintained an open conversation introducing her artistic practice and, in particular advancing details of both her ‘Yegua-Yeta-Yuta’ performance taking place a day after, as well as her forthcoming solo exhibition at CentroCentro, Madrid, opening October 3, 2019, and her solo presentation as part of Van Abbemuseum's ‘Positions #5’, a series of exhibitions presenting the work of artists working in the Netherlands.

September 12, 2019, 5:30–6:30h: (Above and below) Mercedes, Mariana and Max (Latitudes) in conversation at Club Kaiku. Photo: Jonni Korhonen/PUBLICS.
Photo: Jonni Korhonen/PUBLICS.
Photo: Aman Askarizad/PUBLICS.

Azpilicueta performed ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015-ongoing), an evolving solo performance that is part scripted, part improvised. Composed from a litany of hundreds of pejorative, abusive, and vulgar insults directed at women in Argentina, it transforms the everyday language of misogyny and harassment into a kind of tragicomic exorcism. Many of the words derive from the street slang of Buenos Aires, especially Lunfardo, a colloquial and cryptic dialect that first arose among working-class Italian-immigrant and tango communities in Argentina and Uruguay during the late 1800s. For example, yegua literally means a mare – a female horse, a slur for a “difficult” woman. A yeta is a person who brings bad luck, while a yuta is someone corrupt or unscrupulous, and slang for the police. Accompanied by a percussive beat, Azpilicueta reclaims the power to offend, distorting and distending the epithets into something powerful and playful rather than weak and degrading. Azpilicueta performed to the beat of a new soundtrack produced for the occasion in collaboration with Chilean choreographer Rodrigo Sobarzo de Larraechea. 

See documentation on our photo gallery.

Photo: Aman Askarizad/PUBLICS.

Mercedes Azpilicueta during her performance ‘Yegua-Yeta-Yuta’ (2015-ongoing) for TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW festival, organised by PUBLICS, Helsinki. Photo: Latitudes.
Photo: Jonni Korhonen/PUBLICS.

Photo: Aman Askarizad/PUBLICS.


Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.


Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.
Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.

Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.

Photo: Latitudes.


Mercedes Azpilicueta is an Argentinian visual and performance artist based in Amsterdam. Her practice has spanned theatrical mises-en-scènes and video installations, textile sculptures and drawing, sound works and 3D animation. With a particular interest in notions of the vulnerable or collective body, and the primal or dissident voice, her works have drawn inspiration from sources as diverse as Baroque painting, text messaging, medieval tapestries, street slang, and literary fiction, as well as singular figures including the Italian art critic and feminist activist Carla Lonzi (1931–1982), the Argentine-French performance artist Lea Lublin (1929–1999), the French futurist Valentine de Saint-Point (1875–1953), and the Costa Rican-born Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas (1919–2012). A major survey of Azpilicueta’s work to date, ‘Cuerpos Pájaros’ (Body-birds) was recently staged by the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (November 2018–April 2019 — see Latitudes' Buenos Aires report). On October 3, 2019, she presents ‘Bestiario de Lengüitas’ (Bestiaire of Tonguelets), curated by Virginie Bobin, at CentroCentro, Madrid, an exhibition which will then tour to Museion, Bozen, and CAC Brétigny in 2020. Later in 2019, she will have a solo presentation as part of ‘Positions #5’ at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
(Above) Mercedes during her performance ‘Oh, Eduarda!’ on April 14, 2019, presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Photo: Latitudes.

→ RELATED CONTENTS
 2019, conversations, documentation, Helsinki, in photos, Latitudes-curated, Mercedes Azpilicueta, partner organisation, performance, PUBLICS, report
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