La confession de Mademoiselle M

In this project, Mercedes Cueto draws the viewer into a whirlwind of stories that are hers personally or those of others. Curiously, these stories intermingle and become mixed with other experiences from elsewhere on the planet.

Through an aesthetic arrangement of texts and images, Cueto transposes fragments of her stories on large vinyl surfaces. Even though her work naturally tends towards beauty, the artist pursues an underlying preoccupation for what beauty dissimulates. She swings between beauty and hideousness, love and hate, the pleasing and the disturbing. She questions the proximity of these extremes as she pierces and sews the vinyl. The work becomes flesh, sensitive and vulnerable.

This series of paradoxical works shows to what extent people will impose on themselves to reach perfection, ranging from beauty and love to their related obsessions, madness and abuse.

Furthermore, Cueto conceptualizes and personalizes geographical maps of Greater Sudbury that she leaves lying around in public places, such as on seats in cinemas, bars, and bus stations. These maps, bearing drawings, bits of text and old secrets, encourage the people of the community to come to the gallery to discover what is left of these stories.