CUCURRUCUCÚ — Cristina de Middel, Editorial RM, 2016

Cristina de Middel’s Cucurrucucú is a hybrid photobook and conceptual artifact that fuses vernacular Mexican imagery with the aesthetic codes of pulp cinema, violence, and myth-making. Built from photographs found at the La Lagunilla flea market in Mexico City in 2015, the book is a staged resurrection—part crime narrative, part visual poem, part cultural détournement. The man on the cover, bloodied and clutching a pistol, speaks from a comic-style speech bubble: “CUCURRUCUCÚ”, invoking the tragic bolero popularized by Tomás Méndez and Caetano Veloso.

Published by RM and edited with creative precision, this edition blurs the line between archive and fiction, between cultural critique and visual seduction. De Middel’s approach echoes her earlier Afronauts, twisting documentary language until it cracks open a new truth. Here, Mexico becomes both subject and performance—a country visualised through the leftovers of its own image economy.

Technical Sheet
Title: Cucurrucucú
Artist / Author: Cristina de Middel
Date: 2016
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Softcover
Dimensions (cm): approx. 15 × 21
Language: Bilingual (Spanish/English)
Pages: Unpaginated
Publisher / Editor: RM Verlag
ISBN: 978-84-16282-65-4
Condition: NEW