CaccHho CucchhA: PLAY, IMAGINATION, AND COMMUNITY IN AMSTERDAM
Mercedes Azpilicueta presents a scenographic exhibition at de Appel transforming the space into an immersive play ecosystem, where children and adults co-create stories and experience time through imagination and collective care.
de Appel presents CaccHho CucchhA, a scenographic exhibition by Mercedes Azpilicueta (La Plata, Argentina, 1981) that explores play as invention, disobedience, and commons-making. The project unfolds as an immersive ecosystem of modular sculptural costumes, play platforms, and a large tapestry, activated through workshops with children, families, and collaborators. The show is part of de Appel’s long-term commitment to embedded art and mutual learning, placing children and caregivers at the heart of artistic life.
Drawing on Azpilicueta’s research Bestiario de Lengüitas, the exhibition invites visitors to inhabit a porous dramaturgy where children and adults collectively compose stories, gestures, and sounds. It is guided by two notions: cacho, a fragment of time to be repurposed, and cucha, a safe shelter. Each visitor contributes a cacho to the larger narrative, while de Appel becomes a cucha: a space for collective play, care, and slow time.
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Installation view of Mercedes Azpilicueta: CaccHho CucchhA. Photo: Nikola Lamburov. Courtesy: de Appel
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Installation view of Mercedes Azpilicueta: CaccHho CucchhA. Photo: Nikola Lamburov. Courtesy: de Appel
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Installation view of Mercedes Azpilicueta: CaccHho CucchhA. Photo: Nikola Lamburov. Courtesy: de Appel
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Installation view of Mercedes Azpilicueta: CaccHho CucchhA. Photo: Nikola Lamburov. Courtesy: de Appel
The installation features barnacle-inspired interiors, play platforms referencing Aldo van Eyck, modular sculptural costumes, and a ten-meter tapestry combining images, drawings, and references from multiple times and places. Visitors build and dismantle shelters, wear fantastical costumes like Ripping Wings, Rattling Roots, or Staccata de Hortensias, and explore worlds where birds, plants, folklore, and cultural references converge.
CaccHho CucchhA emphasizes autotelic play as identity and community-building. Throughout the exhibition, a series of playshops allow weaving, gardening, storytelling, movement, and sound-making with costumes, fostering shared memories and evolving encounters.
The project includes The Magic Circle: Playing Outside Time, a symposium on play pedagogy and rethinking cultural norms in children’s exhibitions. Commissioned and curated by de Appel and produced with Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, it is supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Mondriaan Fonds, and other institutions.
CaccHho CucchhA will be on view until November 23, 2025, at De Appel, Tolstraat 160, Amsterdam.
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