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Mercedes Ferrari
Born 1979
Lives and works in Brighton, UK
www.mercedesferrari.com
With wry humour, raw energy and visual puns, Mercedes Ferrari’s practice explores
human behaviour and relationships within the domestic space. Violence, gender politics,
sexuality and maternity are recurring themes. Her work, which is composed of sculpture,
drawing, video and performance, is suggestive and provocative with cartoon and stage-
like arrangements fi lled/packed/littered/liberally strewn with sexual content and strong
emotional narratives. She deftly combines the handmade and the readymade - more
often than not using domestic objects - creating experimental anthropomorphic fi gures
which reference the human (especially female) body as she attempts to deconstruct
the social stereotyping of women, such as the objectifi cation of women as domestic
fi xtures and the mother.
Ferrari, always obsessed with fi nding new ways in which to experiment with form, pattern,
colour and composition, continues to challenge her own sculptural language. She
fi nds inspiration in the tragicomedy of daily life, the absurd, childhood memories
and folk culture. Her work is informed by the theories and aesthetics of the carnival
and the grotesque by Mikhail Bakhtin, and how these are used as a means of social
communication in art. Using the philosophical ideas on human existence behind the
Theatre of the Absurd and the improvisation and experimentation in the Comedia
dell'Arte, Mercedes Ferrari constructs a playful and imaginative world of her own upon
the rubble of the world to which we all belong.
La mujerzuela (The fl oozy) attempts to refl ect on the process of women growing older
and how contemporary social pressures makes it harder for them to cherish themselves.
With notions on Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, where the body becomes subject of crude
humour and the differences between people are fl attened as they share humanity, this
piece intends to confront and raise questions on how we live in a modern cultural society
that imposes rigidity in women, physiologically and psychologically and encourages the
viewer to embrace the carnivalesque spirit that might live within themselves.

MERCEDES FERRARI graduated from the Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton with a BA (Hons) in
Sculpture (2013) before progressing onto the MA Fine Art course at the same university, where she
is currently studying. Her MA studies, funded by an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council)
scholarship, has greatly enabled her to continue developing her art practice. She has exhibited
in a number of solo and group shows including; Solo exhibition, Work Programme 22, Community
Arts Centre, Brighton (2013), Light Thickens, Vyner Street Gallery, London (2011), Bi-annual Birth Rites
Collection competition - shorlisted artworks, MediaCityUK, Manchester (2013), Selected Works Reel
Show, Saatchi Gallery, London (2013), Winter Pride Art Awards 2014 shortlisted artworks, CHART
Gallery, London (2014), Winter Pride Art Awards 2014, Tobacco Docks, London (2014), Offi ce Sessions,
4th Floor, Anchorage House, London (2014), MA & Other Postgraduates 2014, Atkinson Gallery, Right: Untitled, 2014, Lampshades, monofi lament.
Street, Somerset (2014) and Vanity Unfair, Desperate Artwives, The Crypt Gallery, London (2014). h: 220cm w: 60cm d: 60cm, Artist’s Collection.
She was awarded with the Santander Community Engagement and Volunteering Award, University
of Brighton (2013) for the project, the Artist Parents Group, and shortlisted for various competitions Far right: Cheeky monkey a la Espagnole, 2013,
including; Bi-annual Birth Rites Collection competition, University of Brighton Alumnus Award (2014), Mixed media.
British Women Artists Award (2013), People's Choice Award, The Signature Art Prize 2013/2014 and was h: 185cm w: 40cm d: 40cm, Artist’s Collection.
a runner up for Winter Pride Art Award (2014).

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