Mercedes Vicente

Fabric sculptor

©Mercedes Vicente

The inventor with a flare for fabric

Mercedes builds sculptures from strips of untreated canvas
She must first prepare the material by gluing it together and priming it
Her work is influenced by the French artist Pierre Huyghe

Born in Madrid in 1958, Mercedes Vicente’s family moved to various locations in Spain during her youth, an experience that pushed her to approach learning in a fundamentally self-taught manner. After first studying philosophy, Mercedes later dedicated herself to art. Initially her works were pictorial, before evolving into sculpture, with canvas as her primary medium. “When I started using this technique, I realised that people were amazed by such a manual process,” she says. “Then I started to think that what I was doing was within the realms of craftsmanship, art and design.” She chose fabric in part because it was easy to get hold of, since a member of her family worked in a factory producing canvas. However she also loved the elastic, organic, flexible and translucent properties of fabric.

Where

Interview

©Mercedes Vicente

©Mercedes Vicente

How did you train in this particular technique?: I invented the technique myself. I saw the need. I had to look for the right tools and explore how to treat the material. I did things correctly. I feel I’ve been training as an artist since I was very young, right through to adulthood, always self-taught.
What was the first object you made?: I remember perfectly why all this started – with a children's game that consists of winding up a tape measure used by a seamstress and then loosening it to create a tower. It is a very childish game. It was the first thing I did. I tried to create a form and turn it into an object.
Where do you find inspiration?: Nature, shells, the sea and those type of things, especially the spiral. The shell is the outward appearance, but the spiral is the shell’s internal organisation and this is what dictates the work. I'm more interested in internal organisation.
How would you define something that is well made?: I believe that is what any artisan pursues. Even if there are artisans who break the rules of the materials, it is in order to seek beauty or to try to do something well or in another way, even if you are destroying it. So, I believe that it is the essence of craftsmanship.

Mercedes Vicente is an expert artisan: she began her career in 2013