Artist Stephanie Mercedes from Washington, D.C. is an artist of transformation, turning bullets into bells, weapons into music (click here for her personal website). She sees bells as a spiritual sound medium that purify space. Also, in a time when there is so much gun violence, bells are instruments of mourning, ways to express our grief.
As an uncategorized Queer Latinx Mercedes was particularly struck by the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. “I easily could have been there,” she told National Public Radio (click here for that story). Because shootings happen at the types of places where we all go daily, there is an intimacy she carries in her work as she transforms the metal of weapons into the metal of music. So, in transformative remembrance of that particular shooting Mercedes took a Sig Sauer MCX rifle, the kind used in the shooting, melted it down, and cast 49 liberty bells for the 49 people who died. The Liberty Bell is the symbol of the NRA, so Mercedes’ transformative art speaks in many ways.
One part of the sound she captures is of the weapons melting in her furnace. She records the sounds to make a soundscape to accompany her art exhibitions. Not all the bells are complete and able to chime. Some are torn or in the process of transformation.
Mercedes also “excavates” the missing histories of violence through her art. One example is her installation of suspended silver lockets to remember the loss and the protests of the Mothers in Argentina. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo brought lockets to the protests with the photos of their missing children. Mercedes has lockets with photos and others empty to remember those for whom there are no images. She also sings the protest songs the Mothers sang as part of the sound of the art.
