Mondongo
Mondongo is the word for a traditional Argentine tripe stew. It is also the name for the
internationally renowned Argentine artist collective who will have their first UK exhibition at
Maddox Arts this winter.
Juliana Laffitte, Manuel Mendanha and Agustina Picasso, who founded Mondongo in 1999,
are not only partial to the stew, but make their work from a ‘cauldron’ of ingredients: “We've
used a huge variety of materials in our art, depending on what best reinforces the concept of
the work," says Manuel Mendanha, 31.
"It's always a process of experimentation until we finish
it. We’ll keep experimenting with materials ‘til death comes!"
A favoured medium is food, freeze-dried and vacuum-sealed in layers of resin, everything from
slabs of meat to Oreo biscuits and Ritz crackers. It’s all about the lowest common
denominator of consumer living - trinkets, cookies, sausages, jelly babies: the work revels in
the tawdry and the grotesque.
We are like three witches stirring it up in a cauldron…. attempting to alchemize, to distill and
to ooze all the chaos and the all possible “all-ness” in it . . . " — Mondongo, 2008 (from the
Mondongo Manifesto)
"It's always a process of experimentation until we finish
it. We’ll keep experimenting with materials ‘til death comes!"
A favoured medium is food, freeze-dried and vacuum-sealed in layers of resin, everything from
slabs of meat to Oreo biscuits and Ritz crackers. It’s all about the lowest common
denominator of consumer living - trinkets, cookies, sausages, jelly babies: the work revels in
the tawdry and the grotesque.
We are like three witches stirring it up in a cauldron…. attempting to alchemize, to distill and
to ooze all the chaos and the all possible “all-ness” in it . . . " — Mondongo, 2008 (from the
Mondongo Manifesto)
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