Cosido Madrileño

“Cosido Madrileño” (which is a Spanish pun on “Cocido Madrileño”, a traditional chickpea-based stew with meat and vegetables from Madrid, and “Cosido” which means sewing) derives from the link between language, television, pictorial tradition and new technologies.

To speak with seseo (an accent feature in certain parts of Spain) or a minor pronunciation flaw makes us hesitate when it comes to understanding the terms cocido / cosido. My intention is to create an image by “sewing” the ingredients together to illustrate a still life based on a cookery recipe.

We are influenced by audiovisual media and whether we pay attention to TV and other media or not, we cannot obviate the fact that they are a constant feature in our lives. Media “trends” are always present, cooking shows gobble us up and the new artists-cooks, with their quasi-surgical recipes and dishes, play an important role amongst Spanish celebrities.

The seemingly traditional aesthetics of a classical still life is broken by the digital sewing of photography.

At first glance, as in Joel Peter Witkin’s still lifes, everything seems normal; but if the observer gets closer and analyses the work of art, he will notice that this slight uneasiness, this small “mistake” that is barely noticeable from a distance, is in fact the sewing of the parts that make up the whole. Two traditional household chores try to create a new contemporary image, a Patchwork made of time and pictorial foreground, which explores the dialectics of language – television, tradition- contemporaneousness.