when i um decided i was going to melt
down the 6-hour mcx rifle i mean i
i was living in new york at the time and
i started calling foundries and they
were like lady you are crazy
you think that we are going to let you
take an assault rifle and put it in our
like
you know industry level foundry kiln
like no way in hell
brian smith here and welcome to the
dream path podcast
where i try to get inside the heads of
talented creatives from all over the
world
my goal is to demystify and humanize the
creative process
and make it accessible to everyone now
let's jump in
stephanie mercedes is on the show if you
like hearing from creatives who work in
a unique artistic space
this interview is for you i don't think
it's hyperbole to say
that no artist in the country perhaps
even the world
is doing what mercedes is doing right
now out of her studio in washington dc
mercedes is an argentine american
multi-dimensional artist who melts
guns bullets and shell casings into
bells
harpstrings and other works of art
mercedes is fascinated by the concept of
taking objects that were built so that
they cannot easily be destroyed
objects that are built for violence and
melting them down
transforming them into things of beauty
grace and instruments of change
although mercedes went to art school
attended smith college
and did art residencies throughout latin
america much of what she does as an
artist today
is actually self-taught some of it she
even learned from youtube of all places
her calling into this form of art
started with the orlando pulse nightclub
shooting
as a gay latina the gravity of this
horrific act of violence
against the lgbtq community inspired her
to make a profound statement with her
art
by taking objects of violence and
turning them into a sonic expression of
joy
after the pulse shooting she melted the
same make and model gun
used in the shooting into 49 liberty
bells
one for each of the victims of the
shooting this is what launched her
career as an artist
allowing her to expand her reach into
installations that incorporate movement
dance music and history what's so cool
about artists like mercedes
although one could argue that there are
no other artists like mercedes
is that she's focused on the
intersection of art with politics
life history and morality if you can't
i highly recommend going to her website
which is stephaniemercedes.com
the link is in my show notes and
checking out her work before you listen
to the episode
so you can get a visual of her work as
you listen to our conversation
so let's jump right into my talk with
washington dc based artist
stephanie mercedes stephanie mercedes
welcome to the podcast
oh thank you so much i'm so excited to
be here yeah
well um i read a little bit about you
online
and i saw somewhere that you prefer to
be called
or that most people call you mercedes is
that what you would like to be called
yeah you know i um i love my first name
stephanie but i just feel like there's
something about
um mercedes which fits me a little bit
better so like
as confusing as it is for everyone i
prefer to go by mercedes
all right mercedes i'll i'll call you
that throughout the interview
why don't we start off by you telling
the listeners
if you're on a train and the person
sitting next to you a complete stranger
asks you what do you do what is your
profession
how would you answer that question i
mean what when i would tell
um the stranger on the train is probably
that um
i'm an artist but uh which can mean so
many things which is the beauty of being
an artist
but what i do is i take weapons and i
melt them down and i turn them into
musical installations works of art and
musical instruments
um and you know that's that's really the
core of what i do
um and uh that can be uh
anything from choreographing a
large-scale performance to
commissioning a small piece but the
really core
of my goal and my practice as an artist
is to try to take
you know these objects of violence and
these objects which have caused harm
like bullet casings rifles
pistols handguns and to really try to
melt them down and transform them
into what i believe is their opposite
which is objects of care and peace
yeah taking those core elements that
at their core they are harmless
but they've been turned into something
that is harmful
and has been used for acts of hate uh
and you're sort of re-transforming it
taking it back to
back to its roots but also putting it in
a form that
is something that people can kind of
unify around as an object of
of peace yeah is that a fair way of
putting it yeah yeah i think i think
that's completely true you know i mean
um i i think for me one of the beauties
of of metal
is that um you know you can take any
piece of metal if it's iron in whatever
shape it is
and if you have the ability to get
something hot enough you can melt it
down and turn it into liquid
and completely re-transform it into any
into anything you want
and i think that's what's always
attracted me
to the medium that something so hard can
become
soft so quickly um and you can really
remold that thing and i feel like that's
that's so powerful
and to be able to take these objects
which were you know really built
so that they could not be destroyed a
lot of times guns have multiple melting
points they're made out of a combination
of so many different
alloys um and metals that they're
they're not meant to be melted down but
i feel like there's such
beauty in a complete act of
transformation and i feel like
you know as an artist that is that's my
end goal to try to completely transform
something
from one thing and two into another yeah
so
tell us about your journey getting to
the point
where you are doing something very
specific in an artistic space because
i i don't think that anyone else in the
country
is doing what you're doing i mean that
would be my guess if i were to do a
google search
for an artist uh who is doing what
you're doing
it would be very difficult to find
somebody in that niche so how did you
find that niche
and what were your influences culturally
politically or otherwise that kind of
guided you there
well you know i think in a lot of ways
it really began with the fact that
my my whole father's side of the family
who are argentinian they're all
motorcycle mechanics and they all
really build these hyper custom
bikes which are
are so custom-made that a lot of times
the parts which are created have to be
made out of scrap metal they have to be
you know
random things which are taken off the
street and then welded or melted down
and returned into something else
so i think i think and you know even
though i went to art school and studied
something else completely differently i
think this idea of working
with metal and of taking recycled metal
and transforming it into something else
was kind of
always part of my psyche and part of my
blood uh you know i
i probably changed like the transmission
on the car for the first time when i was
like under five years old so i think my
goodness
yeah my i know
my mother wasn't so happy about that but
um you know my father used to
like put us on his chest and go under a
car and work on it so i think
this idea of working with metal was just
you know always always part of my
unconscious and
i went to art school i went to smith
college i uh
i took some time off in the middle and
did artist residencies throughout latin
america
and um i think during that period of
time i was really thinking about
what is my framework and what is my
context as an artist and
you know what what do i want to be
thinking about what do i want to be
reacting to
so that was an important period of time
for me but
it wasn't until i graduated college that
i realized i wanted to start melting
down guns and for me
that really began with the orlando pulse
club shooting um
you know i'm i'm gay i'm latina
and i had always felt very unsafe in
latin america
and very naively safe in the united
states and i really felt like
orlando was a big wake-up call you know
i mean how many times
have i danced to reggaeton in the gay
club like i can't even count you know
over the thousands and how many times
have i felt completely
safe and completely at home in
in a gay latinx nightclub again so many
times
so i really felt like it was this moment
in my artwork
where i knew that i had to respond to
the tragedy which had occurred
but there were so many things i felt
like on one level how could i even
respond
to such a horrific and unimaginable
act of violence how could i make artwork
and respond to that
how could i create something which was
both healing
and transformational and also in some
ways brought justice to those people who
had lost their lives
and so i really uh
when thinking about what how did i
wanted to react to
um this event i decided to take uh
to buy a sig sauer mcx rifle
which is the exact model of rifle that
was used by the shooter
and um and to melt it down and turn it
into
49 liberty bells for the 49 individuals
who lost their
lost their lives that night and uh
you know that was really the the
beginning of a huge um
body of work for me and i decided that i
wanted to
work i wanted to make liberty bells
because
in latin american culture when someone
dies you
you ring a bell in order to resurrect
the dead and pay homage to their souls
and i think there was something really
appealing about this idea of taking
objects of violence and objects which
had caused
hate and trying to force them into a
bell
right a bell can also be a form of
celebration
it can be a way of
a sort of sonic assimilation with joy
um but also with memory and with
happiness and with mourning
and so all of those things i really felt
like there was a beauty to casting these
bells out of bullets out of guns
and at the same time i was having a
conversation
with my mother after the shooting
happened
and she said you know i think you might
want to
cast liberty bells um because
a liberty bell it's not only the symbol
of the united
states it's simple why people immigrate
here
you know this idea of freedom but it's
also the symbol used by the nra
and you know in spanish there's a phrase
doble filo
a double-edged sword and i really felt
like that was the double-edged sword of
gun control in this country
um the fact that the one thing which you
know
all of our families want to immigrate to
this country for
because of the idea of freedom was the
same symbol and the same
idea that was allowing all of these
people
um to um use it in order to support
second amendment rights
uh so you know the liberty bell just
really stuck with me
and um and that's how i cast
that's how i began making this type of
work and that's how i
began casting bells out of guns and and
bullets
it's profound and there's so many
different interpretations
too of the the bell and i'm glad you
brought up the nra
connection um because i think that
makes it a little more provocative
too and i think that's important for art
to
be provocative sometimes not always but
um to to have a sort of a counter
narrative
to push against the uh the narrative
that we've heard for decades
from the nra about what liberty means
and if uh for instance
you're and i and i come from a town
yakima you may be familiar with with
yakima
yes but i come from a town which is
very politically aligned with the
the nra typically a lot of gun racks a
lot of
you know flag waving uh truck driving
uh patriot type of people uh here and
i i'm not saying that um flippantly or
disrespectfully is just the way
it is here a lot of people are pro-gun
um but i think
sometimes symbols get co-opted by
movements
and and this might be a way to take that
symbol back
and also in a provocative way make
people think think what is
liberty when you say well you you
put a limitation on purchases of guns
whether it's a criminal background check
or whatever the limitation is and
they say well that's taking away my
freedom yet
here you are a gay latina woman
who thought it was safe in america or at
least safer in america than it was
in south america um
but you no longer feel safe and
that's not freedom either i mean that's
the definition
of of tyranny where
you don't feel safe in your own home you
don't feel safe in a cafe or a club
and so i think we need to really start
redefining
or at least opening up that dialogue of
what freedom means and those liberty
bells really i mean i've looked at a lot
of your work and those bells
i think accomplish that yeah i also
think that
um it's very interesting because i've
had a lot of exchanges with people who
have very different
views on gun control than i do through
my work
and sometimes just randomly people that
are walking passing through my studio
um of course in a pre-covered world
and uh and i i think in some ways it's
interesting because my work tends to be
um it's very soft you know it's very
soft and gentle and not aggressive and
it's kind of this
alternative um form of protest and
and i think because of that it because
of the softness
of the pieces it allows for a sort of
different conversation
to um to begin and to emerge you know
i've had people
who experience my work and they love it
and then they learn the secret behind
the piece that the piece is made out of
it or they
walk closer to the bells and they read
the names of the victims on the bells
and
that they're cast out of out of a rifle
out of an assault weapon
and and sometimes they're members of the
nra sometimes they have very different
views on gun control than i do
but i think that because we're entering
the conversation
through this language of art they're
thinking about it emotionally rather
than intellectually and it
it creates a very different space and
i'm actually i'm so
interested in what that means and
i i actually just wrote a grant with one
of my friends who runs an organization
called issue voter an issue voter
is this amazing platform that allows
people
to be informed about bills and reach out
directly to their representatives if
they
support or don't support a bill it's
amazing because it's apparently
one of the most effective ways for any
individual in the united states to
directly
make sure that their voice is heard and
to directly impact change
and so what we're going to do is we're
basically going to facilitate these
conversations
using art as a medium with people who
have opposing views
and the first one is going to be about
pending gun control legislation and it's
going to be you know with
a variety of people maybe with someone
who might be in your hometown
and then maybe you know who has
different
different views on gun control and then
also maybe someone who
um someone who lives in dc and has
believes that you know all all guns
should be abolished and i think it's
it's really important to have these
conversations right now especially
because we live in such a bipartisan
world
and i think that art can really be the
sort of language and space of mediation
for those conversations to be had and i
you know i'm always surprised by
how open people are to my work um i just
cast
a harp out of um bullets i learned how
to make harpstrings out of
bullet casings and i had to interview
this woman who's a professional
harpist and it turns out that her family
are
members of the nra and and i didn't
learn that until after i made the piece
and i said well why do you want to work
with me you know
you know you know what my intentions are
even if you know they're
not so intense but and she said well you
know at the end of the day i think that
your work is about humanity
and how could i how could i think it's
okay for any person to die unnecessarily
um and and i really love that you know
yeah and i also feel like you know
coming from someone who i have spent
i mean it's kind of funny my day job is
literally like taking apart rifles you
know
um and i have spent so much time taking
these rifles apart i
i think there's a really big difference
between a hunting rifle that has an rpm
of let's say like one a minute
and it's this antique hunting rifle
which is
engraved and handmade and super super
slow
in contrast to an ak-47 with a bump
stock you know there's
it's a big difference right there yeah
um so what would i also say to people
who have
who you know do believe in the liberty
bell as
a form of second amendment rights and
they don't want those second amendment
rights to be taken away of is
i think it's fine if people want to have
that hunting rifle with a slow rpm
but do you need to have a really fast
glock with a bump stock do you need to
have an ak-47 with the bomb stock
that's a different story um but you know
i i do hope that um
that artwork and my artwork in general
will create spaces for those
for those conversations because you know
we really need to have them right now
especially in this country
yeah i i think the the way i would
describe
what art does like yours not only does
it create a space but
it's almost a portal like a safe place
portal to reach people as you say
emotionally as opposed to intellectually
it's easy to get those two confused too
because i think a lot of what we see
on facebook when people post a meme
on whatever side they're on it's it
comes from a very emotional place
it comes from a place of anger but if
the emotion
if you're listening to bells or you're
looking at these bells hanging
from an insulation and you realize
how much work went into what you did and
also the place within you that this came
from
it did not come from a place of hate uh
you're not
holding a picket sign or saying you know
fuck the nra
or whatever your message is a very soft
message and that's the great thing about
art
like yours is you're coming at something
from a completely different angle
and i think it can catch people by
surprise they can be caught off guard
like wait a minute i'm actually
connecting with this
yeah yeah and and i don't know why i am
because
i'm a big second amendment person but
i'm really connecting with it
and that's what's so special about your
project
yeah and i i think um and you know again
it's
i can't i can't tell you the number of
times people sometimes follow artists
where they are like well i have
different very different views on gun
control
but i also love your work um and i think
that
that speaks that speaks to sometimes i
think that um
people mistaken issues of humanity with
politics
and i do believe it's important to you
know you can influence politics as an
artist but sometimes i think
people get confused you know at the end
of the day if it's about
um people you know the value of their
lives and if they can remain
to be alive you know that's a question
of humanity
and i and i think that um at the end of
the day that's what i want my work to be
about
the your work on the orlando
um project you know the pulse nightclub
the shooting that inspired you to do
that first piece of
gun melting work that you've done have
you had any conversations with
survivors of that shooting and seen
their reaction to it
or family members who may have seen your
work
yeah so i was actually um i have a
i have so part of my practice too is i'm
i'm very into
uh performance and specifically
participatory performance which just
means that
a lot of times i make these you know
large-scale installations made out of
melted
bullets or guns and then i'd like to
choreograph
musical performances around them which
sometimes involve choirs
and dance and i like to sort of involve
the audience as much as possible
and the reason why i do that is because
i feel like you know my work is about
people who have died and i
i hope that my practice can always
return back to the live body
and in this case um with pulse i
i always want this this particular piece
to always return back to the live queer
body
right and um and so uh after i made um
the ring of freedom which is the 49
liberty bells
um cast out of the sigs rmcx rifle
i decided to also choreograph a
performance which is called the last
song
and it's called the last song because uh
you know the shooting happened
in the middle of a nightclub which means
that
these people were dancing and in the
middle of dancing in the middle
of celebrating in the middle of
listening to music
that's when they took their last breaths
and so in this performance i'm
essentially finishing the last song
which should have but could not finish
i saw that by the way oh i'm so glad
very moving
yeah yeah um and so i've i've
re-performed it a couple of times and
you know
each time a little bit differently and
uh
i was invited to re-perform it at
a anti-gun violence um concert here in
dc
at the national united methodist church
in um last fall and it was it was really
special because they had
the piece suspended from you know i
don't even know how tall it was it was
an enormous
uh vaulted ceiling and then we did the
performance with 100 person choir
and uh i got really lucky because one of
my friends was doing a residency in
baltimore
very close to dc and she called me and
she was like mercedes i have someone you
have to meet
you have to meet this person and so i
invited the person out to come see the
piece and it turns out that this
individual um had survived the pulse
club shooting
oh my goodness and um and it was
it was just kind of this amazing moment
because she is also
a um she's also a photographer she's a
very talented photographer she also has
a beautiful voice
but you know at the end of the day all
of these pieces that i have been making
are really for her
you know it's about feeling like there's
a small ounce of justice in the world
but she also said something which was
you know
so intense for me is that um she was
like i so easily could have been one of
those bells which is hanging
um in front of her and so i'm
i'm really glad that i got to see you
know that i got to meet her and she got
to experience the work
and then it meant so much to her and
then the other thing that i also learned
from her is that
in pulse there were actually multiple
dance floors happening
all at the same time which means that
there were multiple last songs
so um the the performance which i have
done so far is um to a shakira song
which is one of the songs that was
playing
but it turns out that there was also um
a
song by drake that was playing
and uh and so i hope at some point to
also
again do another iteration of this last
song performance but to do it with this
individual who survived
orlando because she also happens to have
a beautiful voice
um and it's really crazy because in the
song
some of the lyrics of the drake song are
i pray to make it back in one piece
i pray i pray which is
that's just crazy um so
you know i think i always think as an
artist that your practice sometimes
um knows more about what you're doing
than you do and the best thing to do is
just try to follow your practice and i
feel like
meeting her was just a continuation of
my practice
really knowing what's going on um and
i also hope um at some point in the fall
i want to make her
a camera cast out of melted bullets
which will be fully functional
so you know the the world just has a way
of making sure you meet the right people
and
and that and that everything comes full
circle
wow you're gonna make a camera a fully
functioning camera
that's that is pretty ambitious yeah so
i mean i think that um
i'm always like this but i think a big
part of my work is
conceptually deciding okay what do i
want to do and sometimes it's the
craziest idea
in the whole world and then afterwards i
have to sit down and i have to think
okay how can i actually do this and all
of my pieces have been like this you
know
when i um decided i was going to melt
down the six hour mcx rifle i mean i
i was living in new york at the time and
i started calling foundries and they
were like lady you are crazy
you think that we are gonna let you take
an assault rifle and put it in our like
you know industry level foundry kiln
like no way in hell so um
but it took me it took me a year to make
that piece but i eventually figured it
out
um did you have to make your own kiln
yeah i
um so all of the pieces since then i've
made my own kiln
but for that one piece it was such a big
rifle that i ended up getting really
lucky there was a
the new york art foundry which has since
uh shut down
i was able to convince her to let me um
melt the rifle there um and then we got
a jeweler to make all of the molds and
so
that was there was like this combination
of trying to convince her to do it and
also trying to teach myself at the same
time
um and so after after that pace now i
make everything myself
but it was you know it was really
intense and
part of the intensity was the fact that
she kept on freaking out she thought it
was going to blow up
what even if you show that it's it's
uh you know there's no bullets in the
chamber and
part of the issue of like when you're
melting down metal on a big scale it's
of course you know
um you know it's not even an issue of
gunpowder a gun powder is very bad
obviously
i mean i um i clean all of the bullets
especially you have to dry them but you
know if there's
but uh melting metal is a very it's a
very fickle
art and it's a very fickle chemistry
okay that makes sense
yeah and part of the issue is that you
just don't want to have
one alloy which has a little bit of a
higher melting
point than another alloy and you know
again
a gun is very often like a mutt dog like
you have no idea what's in it
but we we got lucky a sig sauer m6 rifle
is surprisingly is one of the few guns
of its size in the world that's made
mostly out of aluminum and that's
because it is the civilian equivalent to
an ak-47
and if you are in the military you're
you know you're working out every day
you're super strong and you have
the capability to hold something which
is really heavy
and a six hour mcx rival is made for
people who are not in the military
they're civilians and so it's supposed
to be lighter and easier to use
which is it which is kind of crazy but
yeah you know
i um the a lot of times i just
think of something totally insane and
then i have to figure out how to do it
but you know the beauty of art and the
beauty of
metalsmithing and of blacksmithing is
that you know pretty almost
almost anything is possible
which is which is amazing so fingers
crossed i will be making a camera
out of melted bullets and uh and
hopefully it'll be fully functional
film camera or dslr uh i think we're
gonna go for a film
i don't think i'm ready for a dslr i
think that would be like a lifetime
project
but yeah but i think a film would be
really cool
so you told us about your experience
uh changing transmissions and you know
dismantling transmissions at age five
so you you obviously have this technical
knowledge that probably translates
really well into
uh what else did you have to do
in terms of education and classes and
reading to really get up to speed
to do what you do now well to be honest
it's
it's really difficult because
metalsmithing and blacksmithing
are they're really dying it's a dying
art form you know
it's something that is you know i wasn't
i was an artist in residence
recently at montgomery college and i
could not believe they have a jewelry
studio and it's really one of the few
um universities in the area that has
that has a small foundry set up and oh
my god
i was just like drooling over all of the
equipment they had it was beautiful you
know and i
i had nothing like that when i was a
student um
so it is a little bit sad it's a it's a
dying art form
um not a lot of people are studying it
anymore not a lot of people are learning
how to do it
and then you know and then on top of
that if you're trying to
force metal to make sound that's even
harder you know
i mean casting is one thing but then
trying to force it
to to you know trying to take this
material
trying to cast it and then to force it
to make a beautiful sound it's like a
whole new
level of difficulty um but you know one
one that i i enjoy the challenge
and i think that to be honest um
a lot of i'm super i'm super self-taught
and a lot of the things which i learned
i have learned off of youtube
um that's great which is really funny
but
you know there's a lot of uh there's a
lot of like
back home people making their own you
know
kilns um youtube videos and
i do a lot of sand molds which are you
know it's a it's a beautiful medium
because the
object tends to be super organic and um
and it's really cheap it's easy to do
you add oil you can remix it
but a lot of what i've learned has been
off of youtube which is really strange
and funny
but um but it's worked you know
so far it's worked and uh and i've also
gotten really lucky i mean
uh normally what i do is i have to let's
say i want to make
for instance like harps drinks out of
melted bullets what i have to do is i
have to reach out to a professional
harpist and then i have to find someone
who knows how to make harp strings
aren't those usually nylon or
or gut or something yeah so they're
normally they're normally cat gut like
um violin strings but the celtic harp
is actually cast out of brass yes
yeah yeah yeah that's awesome now i know
way too much
about harps but um i interviewed a
harpist by the way
oh that's so cool yeah chris kincade if
you want to go back and listen to it
it's a good interview
oh i i should i should i should listen
to it yeah um
yeah so a lot of times i just i have to
figure out how to do it myself
and um i am super excited i'm going to
be a graduate fellow at the university
of maryland
starting in september and
what i'm going to be learning there is
basically how to do everything which i
do now but on a much bigger scale
so instead of casting let's say like a
gong which weighs like 50 pounds
like how can i pass the gong which
weighs a thousand pounds you know
um how can i work on a much much bigger
scale
i have a team of people helping you yes
yes
yeah well that's what i see in the glass
in the glassblowing world because i've
interviewed
a glassblower and a neon artist as well
dan friday is a glassblower from the
lumi tribe
but what i've noticed about glassblowing
is it's a because you're working with
high temperatures probably very similar
to metalsmithing your high temperatures
there's
a limited window of time to do certain
things that are really
important to get what you want out of
this
material so it requires a team of people
and i would imagine that you know having
that being a fellow and having other
students who want to learn and
kind of help you do this would be
immensely
beneficial yeah yeah you know i mean it
will be
um beneficial there there gets to a
point like right now i have a
um you know so your crucible is what you
put the metal in and it's basically made
out of graphite it's made out of the
same thing that the tip of your pencil
is made out of
so that starts out black and then it
will it will go up
to about 2000 degrees and then that's
what you use to pour into your mold
which you've made beforehand and so i
have different sized
different nice crucibles and kilns but
right now
my my when i'm casting really big things
i have my girlfriend help me because
it's too heavy for one person to carry
so we cast big stuff but um yeah i mean
i i think that the beauty of metal is
that
a lot of times the equipment is not very
expensive
um and the mold making if you're not
working in lost wax
is also can be very cheap but it's all
about learning how to do this stuff and
the other thing is that it's you know
it's dangerous
it's really dangerous i mean i wear i
wear a leather apron i wear something
the same thing that like firefighters
wear over their hair
and a face shield and
like gracias dios nothing has happened
so far but
you know you always want to be protected
in case something goes wrong and like
there's um youtube videos of guys doing
pores and then they sweat and the sweat
goes down their leather apron
goes into the crucible and the whole
thing explodes you know
and like and imagine you know if you
know and it's so when you start working
on a bigger scale everything just
becomes more dangerous
which is not a bad thing it's you know
it adds to the beauty of the work
um but you definitely have to be a
little more careful
so yeah can you tell our listeners
how do you make a living doing what you
do
because i i would imagine that you're
you're you're probably self-employed so
you're you're on your own
and it's a hustle uh to
figure out a way to get paid fairly for
your work it sounds like you're
you have fellowships that you've landed
with various schools over the years and
you have
one coming up does that mean in a
fellowship that
that i really don't know what a
fellowship is but does that mean that
a school is has certain um funds that
are available
for artists to
help teach their students for a year and
also get the benefit of
the studio and that type of thing yeah
so i would say um
so uh you know a big part of being an
artist um
especially i would say more experimental
artists is residencies and grants and
fellowships so the one that i'm going to
have at the university of maryland it's
three year fellowship
i'll be there i will do some assistant
teaching
um and but basically they'll they'll pay
me to make my work and to help a little
bit
around but i think that's a big part of
being a professional artist
is i moved to dc because i was
invited to be an artist in residence at
halcyon arts lab which is an amazing
space here
they give you an apartment and a studio
and a stipend and you just basically
make your work for a year you know
and then when once you make the work are
you allowed to sell it and profit from
that work or do you have to
sure yeah no no yeah you can you can
sell it
um and so i you know i would say that um
when you graduate from school
only one of the big issues of art school
is that um you know they're
they're not going to teach you any of
this there's very little of the business
side of things or the actual practical
things which is not so helpful
same thing in law school same thing in
law school they don't teach you anything
about practicing law
that's so funny actually you know i did
an art and law program
oh really in yeah in new york so so
because my mother was a lawyer i
i was always super interested in this
idea of like artists manipulating legal
structures
um as a student and
and so i wrote some contracts as works
of art and
when i when i graduated from university
i um
moved to new york and there's a program
there in brooklyn called the art law
program which is like a
year-long program and so i went through
that um
which i really loved i actually have
this other body
so part of my work is melting down guns
and bullet casings
and the other part of my work is um is
really responding to argentinian history
and trying to think about the history of
the disappear
during the argentine dictatorship and
how can that history be
kept alive and remain vibrant
uh despite a lot of times its denial and
so i have this
big project which i feel like is just
going to be ongoing for a long period of
time
and it's in response to pending
copyright legislation which if passed
would basically
um make a lot of the images which
document this horrific period of time
where 30 000 people disappeared
because of the military regime it would
make all of those images which are
currently in the public domain
become privatized yeah i i saw that
online
uh what another ambitious project i mean
yeah
you're changing i mean talk about art
and law
and how that i'm sure that your art and
law experience helped you
with that vision because well why don't
you just tell listeners what you did
with those images to
try to preserve them while also not
violating copyright and being able to
preserve them
for future generations right so um
in the united states uh copyright is 70
years
post-production which means or
post-post-mortem
which means like after the artist or the
photographer dies
and currently in argentina it's 30 years
post production which is
after i make a work of art or after you
take an image or whatever the case might
be
and and so the pending legislation would
change it
from post-production to post-mortem
which should be a good thing for
individual photographers and artists
because it basically means they have the
right to their work for a longer period
of time
however in the case of the argentine
dictatorship
um it's very particular because a lot of
the people who documented
this you know horrific and brutal and
mostly covered up
violent history in argentina were
photographers who themselves disappeared
and one of the horrible loopholes in
argentina is that
if you disappeared you do not have a
death tate and you do not have the legal
rights to death so if all of these
images
if if the legislation is passed and all
of these images
will essentially become retroactively
privatized by the state
and they'll be inaccessible to to the
public at large and so
what i'm doing is i'm taking i'm taking
these images which are
which have been photographed by
photographers who themselves disappeared
and i'm altering them in four ways
um so i'm cropping them i'm layering
them
i'm reverting them back into a negative
and i'm changing a little some a little
bit of the
contrast of the images so that i
personally can
copyright the images and then donate
them back into the public domain
which sounds super complicated but
essentially what i'm trying to do is
just create this
uh is is to kind of sort of sidestep and
both use the law at the same time
and create this uh archive of images
which will permanently
and forever be accessible to the
argentinian public
that's amazing that i mean yeah to going
back to your original statement
i think of something that's insane and i
just figure out how to do it
okay look what you've done i mean that's
that is so
crazy ambitious and so cool because
what's happening is a cover-up
of of history and a horrific chapter of
history
uh i i didn't know a lot i mean i i
learned about
los those des a parasitos i think they
were referred to by my spanish
teacher senior chama in in college
and i remember him telling us the story
of that horrific chapter i think it was
like
76 to 83 or something yeah that yeah
and um and he was crying telling the
story because i think he was argentinian
and um that was it though there wasn't
i mean in american history books you
don't see a lot
about that chapter and perhaps it's
because it's a different country it's
far away
but that is very recent history yeah
i mean and if you look what's happening
in terms of the
the strongman governments that are
happening in brazil and in america
even we need this type of history and we
need those pictures
like you're trying to preserve so thank
you for doing that
well and and um you know i always say
that uh
it's really something which should be
taught in american history because
the united states was very largely
responsible for
allowing the disappearances to happen
the u.s government propped up
the argentinian and the chilean
dictators at the same time
there's clear evidence which i've
included in my archive that they sent a
huge amount of funds
to buy military supplies for the
dictatorship
and um and they also they were
also like sat right next to the dictator
during the world cup
in 1978 in one of sites which was the
the height of los aparacidos
so you know it's um it's a it's a very
it's a dark period of time and also uh
you know
the very issue of a disappearance and
you know sometimes i think of these two
bodies of work of mine as totally
separate but
at the at the end of the day i think
they're both trying to think about
rituals of mourning and how there's so
much
um justice associated with having the
right to mourn
and having the right to mourn and to
reconcile
um and to find justice through artwork
and um with with this with this archive
i mean imagine if you have
a loved one and that loved one
disappeared you never have a body
you never have a body to mourn argentina
is a very christian very catholic
country and catholicism
you know it's all about the body you
bury the body
and so i think that's there's so much
tragedy to that and
and you know and if the bodies of the
disappeared are effaced then how are
people how are students how are
historians how are
you know regular individuals who learn
later on in life that they
that someone in their family disappeared
how are they supposed to um
to understand and to acknowledge this
history and
you know i remember the last time i was
in argentina i was in
the um the the national archives of
argentina and it's very similar here in
the united states i have an on two works
the national archives where you know
they have a picture of the president
and essentially the views of the
national archive and what is seen
in the national archive is a reflection
of whoever is in power at the time
and i you know i was there and i had
already been there before but it was a
different president at the time
and i'm talking to the researcher about
what i'm looking for
and she tells me in spanish she was like
well
she was like if if you want to find more
images about what supposedly happened
during this period of time you can go to
this other archive
but here was like the head researcher of
the national archives
of argentina basically denying that this
entire period of time
and this entire history had happened you
know
that's so it's so tragic and
i think that sometimes um i think
sometimes
artists and art really need to remind
people
both of the tragedies of the past and
how they relate to the present you know
if you and i think that it connects to
the gun melting down work because
if i tell you 112 people die from gun
violence in this country every day
maybe that means nothing to you maybe
it's water which goes off your back
but if you see 112 bells cast out of
bullets
maybe and you listen to them chime and
then you see
them accumulate more and more maybe
that's you
you develop a different relationship to
that number it becomes more
becomes more real um and i think that uh
that's that's so important yeah yeah
each of those bells
is a voice that is being heard
by who is ever in the room uh or
watching the
the video online um it's it's a very
profound way
to give a voice to the disappeared or
to shooting victims i think the
disappeared have been represented
through lockets
i've seen that in your work too yes yes
so i have a body of work which is called
los relicarios
and um you know i and one of
one of the most poetic things about this
period of time in argentina is that the
first people to speak out against the
regime
were really mothers and then later
grandmothers who had lost their children
and whose children had disappeared and
so they are now referred to as
las madres de placia de mayo or las
abuelas and now we have of course
ichos and igas as time has passed on
and um they were the first people to
walk into the streets
and to truly protest and protest during
a time
when you know protesting might mean that
you disappear
um which is so brave and
and one of the things they used to do is
they used to protest
um both wearing lockets of their loved
ones and also holding lockets in their
hands
and i found that by
going through the personal archive of a
photographer
who really focused on documenting them
and i really just i love that because
in in the same way that i think that my
bells are
are kind of this alternative form of
protest i felt like they were taking
this thing
which is uh so soft and intimate
something which you normally wear close
to your chest
it's normally very personal and intimate
you wear it under your clothes
it's this emotional raw feminine thing
and they were taking that
in order to speak truth to power um
and i love that so the installation is a
thousand lockets
and each one of them have their own
individual light so they basically act
like little light boxes and some of them
don't have any faces because we don't
have faces for everyone who disappeared
and some of them have faces of the
disappeared
and part of the installation is song
and it's uh and it's me re-singing the
song of
of the mothers and the abuelas so it
kind of comes through
the the ceiling that the lockets are
suspended from
this is a crazy question uh yeah it
could be a total coincidence but i was
looking up the history of the mothers
of the plaza de mayo and um
there is a name for one of the founders
of that group
maria mercedes and i was just wondering
if there's any relation
oh no i i'm not related to her but
mercedes is a super common it's a super
common name in latin america
it might be like smith in america yeah
brian smith yeah so have you
found that through your work uh when you
go because you have family in argentina
right
yeah when you go back or even when
you're in america in dc do you ever hear
about pushback from government officials
or
folks who are sympathetic to
the argentine government about your work
and whether you're getting you know
positive feedback negative feedback
concern about how vocal you are anything
like that
i mean i think that um in some ways it's
kind of similar to these conversations
with people who have different views on
gun control one of the things that
always surprises me is that uh no matter
where i am in the world i can be in the
united states i can be in europe
if i'm somehow presenting the work or
showing the work
doing a performance there is always
somebody in the audience who either lost
someone
during the dictatorship has a family
member who
is one of the disappeared or
um you know knows someone else who is
and um so i guess i feel like that
there's something
important about this aspect that a lot
of times no matter wherever i am in the
world there's someone who
personally connects to the work and
you know i i think that um it's this
interesting thing right where like i was
just recently talking to one of my
friends who works for a
cultural organization here in dc and she
was like mercedes we have to get your
work you know
like we want to do a big public project
outside and now
and she was like but we can't do the gun
melting stuff because it's too relevant
to right now so we should do the
disappeared stuff
which is so funny because you know she's
thinking oh it's history it's like less
political and of course it's not less
political you know
so it really depends on who you're
talking to and what their
understanding is of the history um at
the same time like i had a meeting
with a museum the last time i was in
argentina and they were like we love
your work it's beautiful but we have to
wait
like five years before we can show it
until there's like a regime change
um so you know and i i think
i'm always constantly surprised how
people
can deny that 30 000 people disappeared
that makes
you know zero sense to me but it's also
part of the um
part of the violence of the era is that
there are no clear numbers there's no
clear fact sheet right everything
um everything was burned the few the few
images that we have from inside of the
torture centers
are literally because the photographers
used to put them
used to risk their lives put them inside
of books and sew them inside of clothing
for when they
came back outside and that's how we
still have some of the original
negatives
um and and i i have another body of work
which is called this plasmiento and
uh it's this huge basically it's an
installation it's a site-specific
installation
and what i do is i build in the gallery
floor about a 60 foot long pond with
real water in it
and then i have a machine above the pond
which has negatives and the negatives
are slowly fluttering
from the ceiling of the gallery into the
pond and that's because during the
dictatorship
one of the ways that they used to get
rid of bodies as they used to throw them
into the ocean
into rio de la plata and so
and in argentina there's an area called
parque de la memoria so it's like the
space that remembers
the people who lost their lives and the
mythology is is that there's so many
people
who were dropped into rio de la plata
that the sea level rose
slightly during the era of the
dictatorship
and so that's why this piece which i
have um is called esplasamiento because
like the bodies which once fell
the negatives are slowly fluttering into
this
body of water and displacing the sea
yeah i saw that
online too and what an image
that that fissure in the the floor that
you have
you know it's a it's a really profound
image and also message too and uh if
people are interested in that history
if you look up uh just google argentine
dirty war
that's what the cia refers to it as the
dirty war
lots of history on it probably don't
want to get your history from the cia
completely but that's a starting point
yeah there's wikipedia and then there's
probably a lot of good books on it too
but yeah it's it's also interesting i
mean you talk about the
the unwillingness to um accept
that that disappeared that it even
occurred and
and i think that really lines up with
what's happening
right now in the world the the
willingness
to disregard history to disregard what's
happening right
right before you arrive especially in
the united states right now yeah yeah
sort of the orwellian
it's very orwellian to see it happening
in real time
and but then you go back and you realize
that this is not new
uh this is a phenomenon that's just
unfortunately
been part of our humanity or our
collective humanity for
hundreds of years well and i think that
that's actually one of the reasons that
art is so important
you know like i there is a
there is a artist who um i don't i don't
i
he did it he did it last year but he
basically recreated one of the largest
slave rebellions that ever happened um
in new orleans
and which so i mean it was amazing like
talk about like an epic work of art it
was
really really enormous and i think
similarly sometimes i have conversations
with people in this country
and they're just like no the past was
the past what are you talking about
reparations like why is that important
and it's like
which it is so difficult to have a
conversation with but then
if you have these works of art which
allow for people to
maybe have a better understanding
understand the true tragedy
or to maybe open up this section of
their brain which is like
closed off intellectually and to open it
emotionally
hopefully they can understand a little
bit more you know the history
and i think that um and because of
course
history constantly repeats itself and
history is so relevant to the present
and there's no way that we can deny
history
um and the injustices of history will
will constantly follow us
um as a nation as a people and
um and i truly believe that art can be
this kind of
funny gray area where people can enter
into it
and um experience history in a different
way and hopefully
learn for the learn for the better thank
you
so much for your time i just have a
couple of um follow-up questions
that are a little more practical maybe
um if you're if you're giving advice to
a room full of high school students who
have aspirations to create
art in some way is art school
something that you would recommend
you've been through art school but it
sounds like you're doing something
different than what you learned in art
school so
how important was it for you and do you
recommend it to other
kids so it's funny um so i am just
starting to start my own podcast called
la valentina
and um it's a queer latinx podcast and
you know it's just me and another one of
my friends hanging out and talking about
what does it mean to be an artist and we
talk exactly about this for an hour
because
our school is so difficult you know and
i think that um for me personally i
learned a lot more things from doing
artist residencies
at a young age you know starting
probably at like age
19 or 20 because i was surrounded
by professional artists who are
full-time artists
they were about 10 to 15 years older
than me and they were really doing it
and they already had
full established practices and i think
being around them was like the best form
of education i ever could have had you
know
this is how they price their work this
is how they got commissions this is how
they sold their work
um and that was really valuable i think
that
uh to be honest i think you know it's it
is a very much
a privilege to go to art school i was
very lucky i got a um
a big fellowship i would say that if you
want to go to art school go to cooper
union
it's in new york city it's completely
free it's one of the best schools in the
country
if you want to go to art school i would
say go to there but you know
the life of an artist is so hard you
have to be willing to die for your work
it's you know it's really intense you
have to really really love what you're
doing
um so no i i would
i would say if you want to go to art
school go to cooper union but
um not many free schools out there
to choose from probably but that sounds
great then you don't have that
student loan burden to deal with after
you graduate
yeah i think that the really the best
thing for
an emerging artist to do is that you
need to develop a um
a comprehensive body of work which can
be really hard right you have to figure
out
what are you interested in what do you
want to do develop your body of work if
you need to learn techniques learn
techniques
but also just you know go to workshops
go do artist residencies
you will meet other people who will will
help you so much and you'll meet
curators cultural organizers individuals
who will
support your practice because what you
need as an artist is you need a village
of people who believe in you
so it sounds like that tribe and
community is really important
you know just finding your people yeah
you know you need
you need someone who um and they don't
have to be in the art world but you need
you need a group of people
um who really believe in what you do and
what can will fight for what you do
alongside you
nice uh one more practical question
you live in washington dc where are the
the hubs in america that are most
conducive to
finding your community and your tribe
and also succeeding in the art world
well you know i mean i i lived in um i
lived in new york
uh before i came to dc and i was
actually
um you know immediately after i
graduated
from from university i was like all of
my friends were working as
art professors and they were making no
money so i was like i can't work in the
arts it's going to be a disaster
um so i started working as a sailor in
new york um which i really loved
and uh i was i was working for a sailing
company so i was sailing
oh actual sailing i thought i think it
meant like sales or something yeah
no no so i was um i mean basically what
i would do is i would work
as a full-time sailor in new york during
the summer time
and then i would i would do artist
residencies the rest of the year
and um and then because this fellowship
in dc i was able to transition to being
a full-time artist all year round but
um i thought you know i thought oh i
should go to new york that's what you do
as an artist but it was a horrible
idea because it's so oversaturated with
artists right
there's you know an artist like every
square foot or something
and um you know i think that as an
artist it doesn't matter where you are
i mean you need to be surrounded by a
couple of people who
also can support your creative vision
but it's not good to be in a place where
there's uh you know there's more artists
and there is
like dogs or something you know um and
and new york's also very difficult
because it's a particular type of artist
you know i
i don't make sexy male art i don't 3d
print like beer cans
my work is a little bit different and i
think that i also truly believe
that for every single artist there is a
city that makes
the amount of that makes perfect sense
you know
it's going to be unique to them yeah and
i think that
you know maybe there's a different
artist who's not me and new york
is perfect they want to make sexy male
art they want to 3d print beer cans
and that's fine and i think that um i
think that for me you know what's unique
about dc
is that there's more lawyers politicians
activists that come through my studio
than quote unquote art people but that's
super conducive to my practice right
um you know i a big part of my practice
is that i work with
the dc department of forensic science so
um a lot of the the guns that i melt
down come through there after they've
gone through forensic evidence which
takes a couple of years and
that's a huge part of my work and i
don't that would definitely not be
possible in new york city or maybe
any other place because there's such a
valuable connection in between culture
art and politics in the city and that
just happens to be the sort of right
niche for me
and the other thing i would say too is
that
it's very important that you live in a
place that values art so one of the
things that's very unique about dc is
that they have
grants for artists um which are
fellowship programs public art grants
and uh it's really really well funded so
in new york city
if you you can apply to like an ea grant
which i think it's like seven thousand
dollars but you only get to get it like
once in your lifetime and in dc there's
so many grants which are available
for um you know not just quote unquote
artists but musicians cultural producers
and they're available on a yearly basis
and that makes a huge difference as a
creative
oh that's great information uh yeah
mercedes
it's been so fun and informative to talk
to you
oh it was my pleasure yeah can you tell
us
where people can find you online in
social media
yeah so my website is
stephaniemercedes.com and mercedes is
spelled just like the car
and um and then my instagram is mercedes
underscore
the artist awesome are you pretty active
on instagram
i actually um before uh before the
pandemic
i was not active on instagram and then
the quarantine started my girlfriend was
like okay you have no choice you have to
start an instagram
so since covet hit i have been very
active on instagram
and um i'm better for it yeah fantastic
well i uh i'm really
pleased to talk to someone with such a
unique
niche in this industry and i encourage
all of my listeners to to
go online look at your work and do that
history you know do your homework on the
argentinian
dirty war it's really fascinating yeah
yeah
and if you go actually if you go to my
website too there's one section which is
uh called excavating histories and
there's a bunch of also youtube videos
which go into the
history of the dictatorship and in
conjunction with my work
awesome mercedes thanks for being on the
show thank you so much
hey thank you for listening and i hope
you enjoyed today's episode
if so i have a favor to ask can you go
to wherever you listen to podcasts and
leave me a review
your feedback is what keeps this podcast
going you can also check us out on
instagram
twitter and facebook with the handle at
dream path pod and as always
go find your dream path
