About Us

The Space Between is an exhibition that centers indigenous ways of being alongside science, astronomy and creation stories, the existence and re-existences, to explore the space between the celestial and the earthly, the tangible and intangible, and what embeds and weaves the human experience with our living and object kin of which we share this Earth. It aims at putting in common works that address essential issues being discussed today globally and that inhabit in different ways the space between modernity and First Nations either as neo-settlers, bridges, advocates and/or pioneers of the liberation of rooted aesthetics in their ancestral territories.

Brazilian philosopher Ailton Krenak says, “Life traverses everything, traverses a stone, the ozone layer, the glaciers. Life goes from the oceans to the mainland, crosses from North to South, like a breeze, in every direction. Life is this crossing of the live organism of the planet in an immaterial dimension.” In that optic, The Space Between connects artists, researchers and communities from across the planet who are honoring and reimagining our relationships with the skies, lands and waterways, and inviting new collaborative ways of being and working together while signaling the care of the Common Home. The exhibition understands that it is not possible to reduce the indigenous world to contemporary art, and navigates the intercultural tensions between craft, science, music, ceremony, history and the space between modes of practice and thought.

At the same time, issues regarding land management, subsistence living, the rights and acknowledgement of all dimensions of the autonomy of Indigenous peoples, and how these actions and practices interweave with territorial and ancestral memories, climate science, creation stories and the current critical reality of the world at large, are at the core of the project. This demonstrates that rather than dispersed ideas and beyond the localized challenges, the disparities affecting communities worldwide have much in common: the legacy of colonialism, the objectification of life, and extractivism in all its forms have reached every corner of the world pushing us to the brink of collapse.

Paraphrasing the words of Colombian philosopher Arturo Escobar, the space between is also a transitional period and the weaving of designs and possible re-designs between the old paradigm and a new form of our relationship with the Earth that understands human beings as part of a wider form of life; what Krenak has called the ancestral future. It is this possibility, made up of diverse but complementary visions, that the exhibition aims at making possible: A place of reckoning, justice and demand, but also fertility, hope and collective construction taking place in a museum but signaling a larger vision. A reminder that the sooner we recognize the potency of our collective voices, the more chance we have of preserving that life. Because as Krenak has stated, “Either you listen to all the voices of all the other beings that inhabit the planet with you, or you make war on life on Earth.”

The Space Between is a co-production between the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and the Medellín Museum of Modern Art.

Nothing Can Be Truly Replicated is an exhibition of recent work by Ángela María Restrepo, a key figure in the history of engraving, drawing, and illustration in Colombia over the past four decades. Restrepo is also the founder and owner of La Estampa, a print workshop that has served as a training ground for generations of engravers from Antioquia. Her work has focused on two distinct yet interrelated themes: the depiction of seemingly ordinary aspects of daily life and the portrayal of characteristic flora and landscapes of Antioquia and Colombia. Collectively, they offer a comprehensive representation of her lived experience, contextualized within the broader historical and cultural milieu of our time.

Developed over the last year during which the artist faced several health challenges, including a battle with cancer, the exhibition encompasses the artist’s personal experiences and reflections on the passage of time, the fragility of the human body, and the finiteness of life, both human and more-than-human. The show is composed of new work that represents the artist’s experiences in various medical facilities, periods of wait and contexts associated with illness, while also reflecting her contemplations on life and death, love and loss, struggle and hope.

The deceased birds that her dog Aurelio presents to her as a gift, a dying palm in a nearby park, the flowers that adorn her night table and that, with the passage of time, lose their freshness, medical scenes and utensils, and roses that she cultivates and with which she keeps track of days, serve as a reminder that the journey through this world is brief and that the best way to honor it is to live it without fear. These images incorporate allusions to her family, everyday life, her pets, and minor actions that imbue the days with meaning. This group of works offers a nuanced reflection on a subject that continues to be regarded with unease in Western culture but rather than portraying the deterioration or fragility of different forms of life as a dramatic event, the artist presents it as an integral aspect of the human experience.

The title of the exhibition references both the multiple nature of printmaking and the variations that, beyond the idea of repetition, characterize each print on the plate. Nothing Can Be Truly Replicated reaffirms once again the artist’s skill as a printmaker while opening up new lines of exploration and experimentation. In addition to drypoint engraving, a technique that features prominently in Restrepo’s work, the artist employs transfer and supports such as tarlatana (a cloth used to clean the plates) and handmade paper, materials that allow her to explore her own present and that of engraving because as Socrates observed, the terrible thing is not death itself but the belief that death is something terrible.

Art provides a means of legitimizing the plant’s transition from an illicit to a legal status.

Susana Mejía

Khoka Project traces the intricate and multifaceted relationship that humans have woven with the coca plant over time. This species has been subjected to demonization and nearly condemned to extinction as a result of the so-called war on drugs and the prejudice that prevents the differentiation between the extracted alkaloid, a psychoactive substance, and the khoka, which is a medicinal plant with high nutritional value and a sacred status among indigenous communities and ancient civilizations in South America.

The artworks in the exhibition are derived from the study and direct coexistence with the plant under the leadership of Susana Mejía. Through their aesthetic appeal, they seek to challenge and transform negative imaginaries. The question of the identity of the coca plant has guided the unique methodology of teamwork, which has involved journeys to different geographical and social spaces and an investigation into the various discourses surrounding it. During the research process, more than an adaptation of the plants, there was an exercise in understanding the times, care and needs of each species. The four varieties of coca described by the botanist Timothy C. Plowman and that form the core of Khoka Project did not simply adjust to the ecosystem of Medellín; rather, they actively and dynamically adapted, demonstrating agency and resilience, through a multifocal approach to their study, incorporating elements of art, anthropology, history, chemistry, biology, and ecology.

Susana Mejía has developed her artistic practice through empirical research. Her exhaustive pursuit of natural pigments and color prompted her to venture into the Colombian Amazon, where she collaborated with Uitoto women. This venture marked her inaugural encounter with the coca plant. In 2006, with the support of anthropologist Jairo Upegui, she initiated the planting of ipadu cuttings, a variety of coca native to the Amazon jungle, on the triple border between Peru, Brasil, and Colombia. Subsequently, the branches were subjected to drying, creating herbarium specimens, and a multitude of experiments were conducted, all of which were guided by the plant’s life cycle. Additionally, research was conducted using both primary and secondary sources. In this way, the pigments that define a portion of Mejía’s artistic oeuvre yielded to the intense green, so characteristic of coca leaves. And so, the creative space became a laboratory for comprehensive exploration of this botanical family.

In this exhibition, the findings of the last 10 years are presented together with a collection of 10,000 herbariums and intuitive exercises of experimentation and creation, which highlight the aesthetic qualities of the plant as both a living organism and still lives. The Museum thus serves as an observatory and a place of study, regularly activated by experts, including indigenous knowers, chemists, anthropologists, and biologists who have been involved in the project.

This experience is further enhanced by the artist’s bioarchive, a living coca collection housed on the fourth-floor terrace of MAMM. This collection comprises the four varieties of coca that have been cultivated and used by indigenous communities in South America over centuries. Erythroxylum coca, var. coca; Erythroxylum novogranatense, var. novogranatense; Erythroxylum novogranatense, var. truxillense; and Erythroxylum coca, var. ipadu. In this space, the sacred plant, alive and free, is exhibited as a political act of healing.

In 1972, after his self-exile in Mexico, the Peruvian art critic and theorist Juan Acha proposed the term «non-objectualism» to describe the new artistic experiences that emerged in Latin America, and which were seen as a radical break with the traditional languages of art. During the 1970s, the emergence of a vast and complex amalgam of proposals that promoted a new kind of visuality placed non-objectualism at the center of a series of debates: the tensions between the avant-garde and underdevelopment, the relationship between art and popular culture, the aesthetic explorations that led to the emergence of what we know today as contemporary art, the identity searches concerning the concept of the Latin American, the urban transformations triggered by migration from the countryside to the cities, and the role of technology and mass media in the formation of new social configurations of everyday life.

The term «non-objectualism» was based on the search for what Acha called «an independent visual thought,» which was a type of visuality that looked at the local reality by rethinking the participation and presence of the audience through different sensitive mechanisms. In this context, a diverse array of artistic practices was emerging, encompassing geometrisms, political printing, environmental, action and process art, public sculpture, ephemeral experiences, the use of media, conceptual attitudes, and technological integration. Acha believed that these novel forms of social engagement with the visual arts had the potential to engender a transformation of sensibility and, consequently, a shift in mentality that would facilitate political change.

This exhibition offers a reinterpretation of the long 1970s in Latin America, a period that commenced in the mid-1960s and extended until the early 1980s. The works presented here prompt us to examine this period from a perspective that recuperates the particularity of its discourses and the historical context in which they emerged. The examination of humor, political critique, play and playfulness, the dissolution of art in everyday life, and the urban experience as a symptom of new subjectivities directly questioned the social reality of our region. It is not uncommon to find in this selection of works critiques of colonialism and North American intervention, as well as demands for ecological awareness, engagement with feminism, and articulations with popular struggles.

Consequently, the exhibition delineates productions that were integral to the conceptualization of the term at the outset of the 1970s. However, it also traces its genealogy to one of the pivotal moments of non-objectualism: the First Latin American Colloquium of Non-Object Art and Urban Art, which was held precisely at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art in 1981. This exhibition aims at revising the term in accordance with one of the primary objectives of non-objectualism: to identify visual emancipation strategies from Latin American contexts, thereby reframing artistic practice as a radical exercise of freedom.

Traces of Air is an immersive sound installation that investigates the interconnection between breath, air, and memory within the context of Medellín’s urban ecosystem. The work is designed as a relational space, inviting visitors to engage with the sound environment through body movement and breathing, while following patterns of movement and interaction that are projected within the gallery. Drawing inspiration from the practice of deep listening, as developed by American composer Pauline Oliveros, which Alarcón has embraced in her artistic and research endeavors, this installation strives to enhance the connection with our shared aerial environment through attentive and embodied listening.

The installation brings together a variety of sound recordings, including those of walks in the city (around MAMM), collective breathing meditations, and sound improvisations with bird songs from the region. These recordings were made by a group of fourteen participants in a deep listening workshop conducted by Ximena Alarcón in September. These sounds are integrated with a sonification process of data on air pollution levels in Medellín with PM2.5 particles during the initial six months of 2024, as provided by the Early Warning System of Medellín and the Aburrá Valley (SIATA).

The data serve as a continuous, dynamic soundscape, undergoing transformations in rhythm with the activation of proximity sensors located around Lab3. As visitors approach and move within the installation space, the fundamental soundscape undergoes alterations. In consequence, the installation space is not merely a site for contemplation but also one of bodily engagement. Visitors exert an influence on the sound dynamics of the space, symbolically reducing the density of the particles and thereby facilitating the audibility of the vital sounds of the city. The work is activated through the body and breath as a fusion of beings that make the call to become air.

Traces of Air encourages reflection on the relationship between humans and the air we share. It prompts consideration of the ways in which this shared air, imbued with memories and life, connects with our emotions, health, and environment. As visitors navigate the space, they become integral to a collective of respiration, as postulated by the philosopher David Abram. The installation suggests that, through the body, memory, and breathing, we can learn to interact reciprocally with the air, recognizing our interdependence with the urban and global ecosystem.

[…] The Poetry thing is crest carved in heart if of basalt ashes.

León de Greiff

In a span of just a few weeks, the effects of high temperatures have led to the devastation of a total of 10,903 hectares of forest in Colombia. A total of 26 active fire points were recorded, with nearly 11,000 hectares affected. Stifling heat, suffocating life. This is a compelling reason to extend this poem once more and make this mystical appeal heard publicly.

Shouldn’t we all have our own inventory of tragedies and extinctions in our lives?

In this vein, the multichannel audiovisual work Correspondences presents a compelling challenge. This installation of variable geometry is an invitation to continuous movement, to nurture and care for our own reliquary, and thus it is alive and constantly evolving. It is possible that butterflies on the brink of extinction may emerge from MAMM’s Foundry and take flight, following either the natural light or the prevailing air currents, in a northerly or easterly direction. It is also possible that specimens of magnolia or cycad, hornblende andesite, or dry volcanic lava from Cerro Tusa, which is 7,9 million years old, may be present.

Over the course of four months, Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith will intermittently intervene in the Foundry, serving as an alternative conduit for collaboration between the cosmogonies of indigenous communities and power plants, or for the generation of subterranean realms and critical reflections on hierarchies. This will bring the figure of anarchy closer to the non-objectualists and Pasolini. Spinoza was clear that fragmented narratives and layers of meaning are inherent in nature. Ultimately, everything is about mutual support, equal distribution of power, and participation. With a little luck, these elements will provide a new direction for these flames.

Muse: Female Perspectives in the MAMM and MAC Panama Collections is an exhibition that brings together works from the collections of the Medellín Museum of Modern Art and the Panama Museum of Contemporary Art. It seeks to highlight the works of women artists who have historically been less prominent than their male counterparts. The exhibition title stems from Musa, a video work by artist Minia Biabiany (Guadalupe, 1988), which in turn takes its name from the scientific classification of the banana plant, musa paradisíaca. A common plant in the tropical latitudes of the Americas and Asia, the banana flower is used for medicinal purposes related to uterine ailments, and additionally, it is a fruit that has played a central role in extractive processes in the Americas.

The term «muse» is generally understood to refer to the female figure who provides inspiration to the (male) artist in a heteropatriarchal and, therefore, masculine worldview. However, when diving in Biabiany’s universe, it draws upon the symbolic and visual possibilities to represent the women in her family, their capacity for healing, and Guadalupe’s history of dispossession. Just as the fruit of the muse is used to treat the female reproductive organ, this exhibition aims to address the social symptoms that have historically prevented women from participating in spaces of creation, enunciation, and representation such as museum collections.

Muse: Female Perspectives in the MAMM and MAC Panama Collections addresses the role of women in recording history, the way women have been represented in art, and the attempts and successes in self-determination and self-representation. It also looks at how certain attitudes and methodologies associated with «the feminine» have shaped our understanding and production of art. The exhibition also aims to challenge traditional and outdated notions of gender, as well as to question and resist the dominance of binary logic, considering other gender-diverse identities. Imagining the feminine as an energy that encourages specific attitudes and actions aimed at fostering care, growth, dialogue, and collaboration, rather than focusing on a specific aesthetic or theme, will always be a reference point.

The exhibition brings together works by more than sixty artists from multiple countries and is displayed in three galleries. The works are grouped according to conceptual and formal affinities, enabling dialogues between artists from different periods and geographies. This gallery features works by artists who represent a diverse range of female universes and visions, exploring the multifaceted aspects of womanhood from varying perspectives. Gallery F presents works that explore the intersection of abstraction and formal experimentation, creating a space for spiritual inquiry where feminine subjectivity is expressed through the use of fantastical, dreamlike, and magical elements. Gallery G, on the other hand, showcases works that address the political memory and social critique of various historical times in our territories.

This joint survey of the collections of both institutions reveals the persisting gender disparity among the artists represented therein. Furthermore, the project enables an examination of the forms of institutional work, acquisition policies, and the significance of the staff responsible for the care of the collections. The exhibition will be presented initially at MAMM between July 2024 and May 2025, and subsequently at MAC between July and December 2025. It will be accompanied by a series of public programs, talks, meetings, commissions, and a publication.