DIANA MERCADO
A TALE OF THE ANDES
“I grew up with tales of lost gold, mountain spirits, and Inca princesses vanishing into the Andes. My grandfather’s stories blurred myth and memory—and this exhibition is my way of telling them back.” Diana Mercado, 2025
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I come from a family of storytellers. The tales we told, brimming with specters, demons, spirits, and ogres, were extraordinary and magical. The surreal beauty of Ecuador’s mountains fostered an aura of mystery in which such things were a familiar presence, woven seamlessly into the fabric of everyday life. These stories were an important part of my childhood. Years later, I would remember dark afternoons spent telling each other stories, the words floating above us, incantations that held us captive. Those memories now bring back images of the Andes – massive, impenetrable, magisterial, yet wrapped by a delicate white lace of soft snow. There, the world seemed to possess such enchantment and possibility.
My grandfather’s stories were the best, and his best story was about the Inca princesses and Atahualpa’s lost gold. I remember sitting in the kitchen at sunset looking out to the Andes with the smell of black coffee brewing in an ancient battered pot, distracted occasionally by flickers of light that suddenly lit the infinite darkness of the mountains. My grandfather’s voice would then break the hushed silence of the house. “There, look! The princesses hurrying to hide their gold!” My head would snap up and search the mountains through the kitchen window while he began the story of the Inca princesses who fooled the cruel Pizarro and his greedy men. The princesses hid the gold meant to ransom Atahualpa, seized by the conquistadors, far up in the Andes when they realized the Spanish had no intention of letting the Inca emperor live.
The story is not only a distant memory from childhood – it was a tale my grandfather told me through the years over and over again. I was in university in New York the last time I heard it. Sometimes I’d beg him to tell it to me and sometimes he would simply work it into his repertoire of stories. He would begin – his voice rising and falling, now into hushed whispers, then into bursts of laughter. The story never changed. Over time, it would become talismanic. I carried it with me, the memory of it encouraging me, empowering me, giving me strength. Now, decades after I first heard it, it has become the source of inspiration for my much of my work and this exhibition, A Tale of The Andes.
Diana Mercado, 2025
Artwork: Sueños Dorados (Golden Dreams), Oil and Gold Leaf on Linen, 20” x 20”, NFS
Displayed Here are a selection of Artworks. Please visit the Exhibition to see all works; alternatively email us at thegallery@greenandstone.com to request a full artworks list.