CaccHho CucchhA

2025

Scenographic exhibition: modular sculptural costumes, play platforms and large tapestry

de Appel
13 Sept, 2025 – 23 Nov, 2025

CaccHho CucchhA treats play as invention, disobedience, and commons making. Commissioned by de Appel, the project unfolds as an immersive ecosystem of modular sculptural costumes, play platforms and a large tapestry, activated through an ongoing series of workshops with children, families, and invited collaborators. CaccHho CucchhA is part of de Appel’s long-term commitment to embedded art and mutual learning, as well as hosting children and caregivers into the centre of artistic life and rethinking what behaviours, and whose tempos, are supported in cultural spaces.

CaccHho CucchhA draws on Azpilicueta’s long-term research Bestiario de Lengüitas while shifting away from adult-centric frames. The exhibition invites visitors to inhabit a porous dramaturgy where children and adults collectively compose stories, gestures, and sounds. The exhibition is structured around two guiding notions: cacho, a fragment of time that is immeasurable or leftover to be repurposed into something new, and cucha, a shelter or safe place. Here, every visitor’s contribution forms a cacho of a larger narrative, while the exhibition space of de Appel becomes a cucha: a hospitable environment for collective play, care, and slow time.

The exhibition is shaped by barnacle interiors, playground platforms inspired from Aldo van Eyck’s designs, modular sculptural costumes, and a large scale tapestry. The abstract structures invite open-ended interaction rather than prescribe fixed behaviors. They invite children to build and unbuild tents and shelters.

CaccHho CucchhA resists productivity-driven time. Instead, it privileges autotelic play (after Brian Sutton-Smith) and foregrounds play as identity and community-building, where rituals of weaving, listening, and moving build shared memories.

Public Programme and Playshops

Playshops

CaccHho CucchhA was activated through children’s free play and a series of artist-led playshops. These sessions were facilitated by Mercedes Azpilicueta herself, Antonella Fittipaldi, Anna Klas, Lina Bravo Mora, Raoni Muzho Saleh, Gļeb(s) Maiboroda and Vere van der Veen, and explored the exhibition through storytelling, dwelling-making, weaving, sound-making, and planting. Since this is a child centred exhibition, rather than being guided or instructed, children were accompanied, with activities adapted to their collective rhythms, needs, and desires. The playshops were open to children aged 4–12. Adults were expected to participate in the play activities.

Symposium

On the 27 September 2025, The Magic Circle: Playing Outside Time symposium gathered artists, curators, and theorists such as Choi Heong-uk, O(o)yster Moms, María Berríos, Zeina Maasri, Priscila Fernandes, Penny Wilson (Assembly Collective), Daniela Pelegrinelli and other guests to address: How do exhibitions for children reconfigure institutional norms? How can difficult subjects be introduced with care and complexity? Sessions considered disobedience as an artistic and curatorial tool, layered storytelling, and the ethical labour of hosting young audiences without oversimplification.

Text adapted from de Appel. 

This exhibition was commissioned and curated by de Appel. Produced in collaboration with Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein where the exhibition will be presented during late spring 2026.

This project is supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Mondriaan Fonds, Elja Foundation, Stadsdeel Zuid, Fonds Cultuurparticipatie, Iona Stichting and Zabawas.