New Mexicans Elizabeth and Rodolfo Maximiliano Cupich have been producing work together under the name CochinaNasty since 2012. Through performance, installation, printmaking, painting and digital imagery, they reimagine all aspects of popular culture: celebrities, films, advertisements, magazines and cultural ephemera.  Cochinanasty uses humor to show what they see in the world around them, exaggerating visual elements to emphasize hidden sexual, racial, and political undertones. Sources such as Goosebumps novels, lottery scratchers, pornography, popular brands, movie franchises, Magic Eye books and mall food court vendors provide familiar canvases for Cochinanasty to brand as their own.

Cochinanasty is particularly interested in B-list celebrities and individuals on the outskirts of celebrity, such as baller-turned-DJ Rony Seikaly, Howard Stern Whack Pack member Beetlejuice, filmmaker and denim magnate Tommy Wiseau, real estate impressionario and director Neil Breen, Romanian music star Sandu Ciorba, and Weekly World News darling Bat Boy. Cochinanasty draws inspiration from iconic places, whether these places are meaningful on a culture-wide level or famous only to New Mexicans. Ranging from the Albuquerque Mall to nation-wide predatory loan shops and local monuments, these locations can be re-represented graphically (for example, our 2018 lithographs depicting an area in Santa Fe, New Mexico selling beef jerky and cremation in the same strip mall), or literally entered in the case of performance and/or photography (For example, in January 2018 we performed Sanctuary, a public intervention, at Anish Kapur’s Cloudgate in Chicago, in which we covered ourselves with silver emergency blankets. We hoped our pathetic attempt to mimic the sculpture and hide under the blankets would evince the false promise of assimilation and protection in American cities).

Cochinanasty finds joy and inspiration in the works of @methsyndicate, @obviousplant, Brad Troemel, Matthew Mccormick, Tom Sachs, Maurizio Cattelan, Patrick Martinez, Robert Nava, Emma Sobel (@emmasobelphoto), Gina Beavers, Gina M. Contreras (@ginamcontreras), Angela Azmitia (@aazmit), Chris Williford (@cwilli), and Mary Roll (@mary.roll). In their spare time they enjoy skateboarding, biking, listening to records, and doing hoodrat stuff with their friends.