As part of Collective’s summer exhibition, Fire on the Mountain, Light on the Hill, leading visual and performance artist Mercedes Azpilicueta has come together with artist and choreographer Janice Parker to create a new performance for Edinburgh Art Festival’s closing weekend.
Azpilicueta will draw together the themes of the exhibition with Collective’s site on Calton Hill, referencing stories of protest and political expression connected to the hill and its viewpoints.
The performative journey unfolds through a series of choreographed gestures and embodied movements that draw from the struggles and resistance of women, real and fictional, across time. Through shared movement, silence, repetition, and symbolic actions, the performers will inscribe their own temporary, fluid monument onto the hill: a moving ritual envisioning new forms of solidarity and resistance for our current era.
No booking required. The event is free and drop-in.
Azpilicueta's exhibition is centred on monumental human-scale Jacquard tapestry entitled ‘Potatoes, Riots and Other Imaginaries’ (2021). This mixed media installation weaves together historic and contemporary themes – inspired by the artist’s research of the 1917 Potato Riots in the Jordaan neighbourhood of Amsterdam. The show also references contemporary collective action in the form of Ni Una Menos – the feminist grass roots social movement in Argentina, in which Azpilicueta has played an active role since 2015. All these themes come together in this collaborative new performance. The exhibition will present drawings relating to the choreography and costumes that will be worn as part of the performance.