FAMA's March Coffee, Wine and Tour of Inútil

FAMA Members: Get ready to sip, swirl, and explore at FAMA's March Coffee, Wine, and Tour - a delightful experience for all your senses!

Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas (FAMA) invite you to our Members-Only Event: Enjoy refreshments and brief remarks in the sun-filled loggia, followed by an intimate and interactive tour of the innovative exhibition Inútil (Useless) with Adriana Ospina, director of the Art Museum of the Americas (AMA), and multidisciplinary DC-based artist Stephanie Mercedes.

We are limited to 25. If you or your guest are not already members of FAMA, you may join here on Eventbrite in the ticket section or join here today on our website. Support cultural diplomacy locally and throughout the Americas!

The OAS Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) and the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression (SRFOE) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) present Inútil, an exhibition of new work by Stephanie Mercedes accompanied by pieces of the AMA permanent collection. Mercedes’ practice spans sculpture, sound, kinetic art, opera, club culture and choreography; transforming weapons into sculptural and musical forms. In her work, material speaks for itself. The dripping sounds of wax, the echoes of a power hammer, the forging of a new form—or none at all—are all treated as music.

Important artists of the hemisphere represented in the AMA collection, such as David Manzur (Colombia), Juan Downey and Gaston Orellana (Chile), José Luis Cuevas (Mexico), Marcelo Grassmann (Brazil), Nelly Freire (Argentina), and Arnold Saper (Canada) are in dialogue with Mercedes’ new body of work. Here they situate contemporary concerns—violence, freedom of speech, identity, liberation, internal and external repression —within a broader "decentralized, integrative, contextualized, and multidisciplinary regional artistic lineage.

This exhibition follows Mercedes’ memorial to murdered journalists at the OAS gardens in 2024, organized with the SRFOE in the framework of the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.

Art & Photo Credits, left to right, above:

Stephanie Mercedes
there was something wrong with the invitation
glass, wax, brass, exciter, sound, broken weapons, laithed weapons, artist’s head

AMA director Adriana Ospina and artist Stephanie Mercedes at entrance to the exhibition

Stephanie Mercedes
it's a belief system
wood, motors, metal cast from weapons, pulleys, sound, contact microphone, artists head and braids

Photographs by Rafa Cruz Photography

Date and time

Sunday, March 22, 11 am-12:30 pm

Location

Art Museum of the Americas
201 18th Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20006

Your member donation goes directly to Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas (FAMA), a nonprofit membership organization that supports exhibitions and educational outreach programs of the Museum.

By attending this event, you acknowledge that photography, audio, and video recording may occur. These materials may be used for promotional purposes, including website content, social media, and marketing materials. Your presence constitutes consent to such recording and publication without compensation. If you do not wish to be photographed, please notify the organizers or event staff immediately.

Accessibility: The first level of the museum is wheelchair accessible; however, the second level of the museum has a winding staircase leading to it. Restrooms in the museum are not accessible, but people are welcome to use the restrooms in our offices next door to the museum, which are accessible. Please contact artmus@oas.org with further questions on accessibility.