Aurèlia Muñoz: Beings

Exhibition curated by Manuel Cirauqui, Rosa Lleó and Sílvia Ventosa Muñoz, through the einaidea research platform in close collaboration with the Aurèlia Muñoz Archive.

MACBA presents Aurèlia Muñoz: Beings, a detailed examination of the five-decade-long artistic career of an epoch-defining Catalan artist. With her visionary practice, Aurèlia Muñoz (Barcelona, 1926–2011) anticipated contemporary forms and sensibilities from the ontological turn to ecofeminism and the new crafts. Unprecedented in its scope, this survey uses the artist’s understanding of “artworks as beings” in order to explore an inexhaustible profusion of plural characters, genderless entities, animated textile bodies, self-standing dresses, plant-architectures, and the so-called “bird-kites.”

This ambitious retrospective gathers more than sixty large-scale macramé sculptures, embroideries and fiber works, nearly two hundred drawings, alongside a variety of paper-based sculptures that have rarely or never been exhibited before. It also presents an important selection from the artist's archive, including photographs, ephemera, letters and personal papers, notebooks, and research materials in various media. Although initially associated with movements such as La Nouvelle Tapisserie and the Escola Catalana del Tapís, Muñoz's oeuvre goes well beyond the canonic definition of textile art. Her project was far more expansive, and its coherence emerges through constant shifts in scale and medium. Combining ancestral techniques with contemporary resources, and engaging with engineering and anthropology, Muñoz nurtured a personal cosmology while responding to the incipient crises of the post-industrial world. 

Understood as a polyphonic effort, Aurèlia Muñoz. Beings has relied on an interdisciplinary Scientific Committee directed by Manuel Cirauqui. Alongside the exhibition’s curatorial team, expert members include Emma Ingala, professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid; María Elena del Solar, PhD in anthropology and expert in pre-Columbian and Amerindian textiles; Victòria Rabal, artist and director of the Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades, Lleida; Josefina Salazar, assistant to Aurèlia Muñoz for more than fifty years; and the special collaboration of Ana Roquero, world-renowned expert in color ethnobotany. Likewise, Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of MACBA between 2021 and 2026; Manuel Segade, director of the Museo Reina Sofía; and Amanda de la Garza, artistic deputy director of the Museo Reina Sofía, have served as key interlocutors throughout the project. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a groundbreaking publication, featuring a large selection of rare artwork reproductions spanning five decades, plus a selection of critical essays by curators Manuel Cirauqui, Rosa Lleó and Sílvia Ventosa Muñoz, as well as commissioned texts by anthropologist Ana Maria Ramo Affonso and media theorist Melody Jue. Available in Catalan, Spanish and English editions, the monograph also includes a revised chronology of the artist’s career and a new, comprehensive bibliography, offering key reference material for future researchers.

Aurèlia Muñoz. Beings is a central event of the Aurèlia Muñoz Centennial, an initiative promoted across Catalonia by the Generalitat de Catalunya, in which a constellation of cultural institutions joins forces to celebrate one of the most singular artists of the twentieth century. Between April 2026 and April 2027, MACBA will lead a variety of programs and exhibitions of Muñoz’s work throughout the region, together with an extensive educational initiave addressing Muñoz’s complex and fascinating universe.

One of the key events will be an International Symposium held at MACBA on the 5 and 6 November with the participation of Eshter Rivas, Laía Argüelles, Sophie Desrosiers, Emma Ingala, Tim Ingold, Violeta Mayoral and Mireia Molina Costa; specialists from various fields that will examine the practice of this prominent Catalan artist, building bridges between disciplines and opening new avenues for research.

Aurèlia Muñoz. Beings is organized by MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona alongside Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.