Mondongo is an art collective that formed in 1999.  The Buenos-Aires-based duo create sculptural paintings and ephemeral tableau performances. Writer, artist, and early documenter of Mondongo’s work, Cecilia Pavón wrote “one way of the other, every piece created by Mondongo is about mourning, an inexhaustible feeling anchored in childhood and playing.” This play is executed with technical virtuosity, using a variety of unusual materials, such as wax, thread, toast, meat, and nails. One favorite material for the collective is plasticine. When the pieces are viewed at a distance, the images are rendered exquisitely, yet on closer examination the illusion breaks up into thousands of built out plasticine bits, layered, artists’ hands visible. Mondongo’s work translates the dark side of fairy tales and the subconscious, whether through a chilling Pinocchio mask made of geometrically shaped mirrors, or work featuring Little Red Riding Hood with lurking Big Bad Wolf close behind.

Early life experience seems to inform the dark spectacle that permeates the mood of the work. The performance pieces bleed into the public space, luring the passerby to witness a display of the unconscious, drawing on surrealism and ritual. There is redemption in the exchange between viewer and artwork. Pavón explains that the art is “understood as a ceremony, where information is transformed into an unknown energy capable of making people connect with their pain, even if they don’t realize it.”

72 pages
Hardcover
8.25 x 9.75 inches
Released January 2020
ISBN 9781889195612