Entre viento, sol y marea, 1995. Modelando en La Perla, photograph by Fernando Paes

Documentation of Public Performances, 1995-2000

C-prints

For over ten years, Freddie Mercado has engaged in his own brand of guerilla performance work in Puerto Rico, solo intercessions that challenge historical notions of race and gender. On a daily basis, he transforms himself into a variety of feminine dramatis personae, ranging from simple, modest Puerto Rican females, to outlandish historical-baroque confections that frequently incorporate Afro-Caribbean touches. Mercado creates all his own costumes and props from recycled and second-hand materials–all manner of costuming and hand-held props which he rarely uses more than once.

Performance at the opening of Museo de San Juan, 2000

Through his conscious and playful layering of historical and cultural codes of the feminine, Mercado uses connotative signs to hyperbolize the signifiers of concepts such as "the feminine," and "the Caribbean." These distorted, exaggerated costumes deploy a conflated costume presentation of Puerto Rico’s successive histories rendered through the image of woman. Mercado works extensively with colonial baroque European style, but often refers to the indigenous African and native Indian presence.

Although he dresses every day–sometimes simply remaining inside his apartment–he reserves his more painstaking projects for art openings or other crowded events. His interventions employ an unsettling mix of strategies. Mercado engages in conversation with friends and admirers, then freezes a pose or theatrical gesture. Mercado often sings or erupts in strings of onomatopoeic sounds, occasionally engaging in a one-on-one exchange with an audience member.

Mercado’s work is intelligent and humorous, playing with signs of the feminine, amplifying them, tweaking them, replaying them. His work is about the viewer’s confrontation with these exaggerated signs. He examines how people permit themselves to react to him and to the notions that he, in costume, embodies.

Mercado is working within a particular history of performance art. With a sense of humor and feistiness, he elaborates on a strand of feminist inquiry begun thirty years ago that questioned the display and autonomy of feminine sexuality by infiltrating daily life and then unexpectedly rupturing it. His continual transformation speaks to the desire to fit the molds set forth for feminine beauty. It is a provocative and powerful statement on masquerade and attractiveness.

Although photographs are not his primary form, Mercado’s live work can be appreciated through photographs of two orders: snapshot documentations of his performances, and staged photographic scenes in which Mercado colludes with other artists. In these photographs, one is able to linger over the details of the imaginary Caribbean which he presents.–DC

Freddie Mercado (b. Santurce, Puerto Rico, 1967) received his Bachelors’ degree in painting from Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico (San Juan). Major exhibitions which have highlighted Mercado’s work include Primer Festival de Performance, Casa de América (Madrid, Spain, 2000), Caribe Insular: Exclusión, Fragmentación y Paraiso, Casa de América (Madrid, Spain, 1998), and Expo Interación Caribeña, at Colegio Dominicano de Artes Plásticos (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1993).

Mercado has performed with various dance, theatre, musical and performance companies and collectives; he also designs costumes and props for various troupes. He has worked closely with Petra Bravo, Arturo López, Zora Moreno, Lourdes Ramos, Ivette Román, Mayra Santos, and Awilda Sterling. He has worked with the groups Andanza, Contradanza, Del Cuerpo Danza Contemporánea, Inc., and Taller Interdisciplinario of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas. Mercado has also recently been collaborating with the Latin rock groups, El manjar de los dioses and Circo.