Mercedes Teixido is a visual artist working in the areas of drawing, weaving, and performance. As the daughter of Paraguayan parents who moved to New York City with two children and had three more in the United States, she is always in conversation with the construction of self and community. She attended Wake Forest University and completed her MFA at the University of Arizona. Her work has been exhibited and performed in national and international venues including in New York; Los Angeles; Washington, DC; Asunción, Paraguay; Berlin; and London. Often, she has pursued noninstitutional contexts to create site specific works. Teaching, public performance, and leading workshops are part of a larger practice of inviting others into a space of experience. She has taught at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the Instituto de Superior de Bellas Artes in Asunción, Paraguay. She lives in both Claremont, California, and Hamden, New York, and she currently teaches drawing and fiber arts at Pomona College.
What does it mean to make drawings, especially over other art forms?
Drawing is a handwritten note, a map, an idea, instructions, an explanation, an accident, an impulse, the way that something sits on paper, being present with a space or a person, a movement of the body. For me drawing is ephemeral, something that isn’t thinking about the past or the future, something that is of a moment, a process, a possibility.
What kind(s) of rituals are embedded in your drawing practice?
Something is always beyond control, beyond intention.
Something is always visited again and again.
Mostly things are of a day.
In what ways does Los Angeles influence (or not) your approach to drawing?
The place called Los Angeles is many places.
This place celebrates sound and taste and color and freedom of taking form.
It all feels like an invitation to be yourself without apology.