Discover Andrea Canepa's 'Fardo' Textile Art Exhibition at the Reina Sofía Arts Center

This exhibition at the Reina Sofía features artist Andrea Canepa's exploration of pre-Columbian Paracas textile bundles and ancestral wrapping rituals. The installation transforms the temporary covering of the Crystal Palace into a meaningful element, reflecting on themes of covering, mystery, and opacity.

Andrea Canepa's work, situated at the intersection of art, sociology, history, and anthropology, investigates how organizational systems shape our perception of the world. For her intervention at the Reina Sofía, specifically on the temporary covering of the Crystal Palace during restoration, Canepa focuses on the textile bundles of the Paracas culture and the ancestral ritual of wrapping the deceased. The artist is fascinated by the act of covering and the multiple meanings contained within these fardos, which she has contemplated since childhood. The meticulously wrapped bodies, adorned with symbolic patterns, have profoundly influenced her imagination. Canepa emphasizes the importance of the process itself: the time, gesture, and ritual of covering, asserting its significance beyond its apparently provisional nature. The canvas, serving as a temporary veil for the Crystal Palace, transcends its functional role to become a meaningful element, transforming the waiting period into a significant temporal experience. The work displays images of tied and superimposed fabrics, enlarged photographic reproductions based on previous oil paintings. This juxtaposition of a captured moment (photography) with the repetitive gesture of painting—observing and translating perception—creates a dialogue between mediums. Painting reality necessitates contemplating the material without questioning it, and this slow, meditative rhythm fosters a ritualistic connection. Through this layering of temporalities and material means, 'Fardo' evokes a subtle sense of estrangement, reminding the viewer that reality is denser and more multifaceted than the simple appearance people often prefer. Canepa extends these ideas to the context of the Crystal Palace, a 19th-century building that embodies a modernity where transparency was paramount. Currently undergoing a transformation that requires it to be covered and temporarily removed from view, the building becomes a subject for the artist. By symbolically enveloping it in layers of fabric, Canepa challenges the logic of absolute visibility, inviting a rediscovery of what modernity often relegated: mystery, the sacred, the sensuality of matter, and the right to opacity. The intervention further links the iron and glass architecture of the Palace with another significant technical advancement of its era: optical devices precursor to cinema. Canepa transforms the building into a contemporary praxinoscope, rendering its glass panes into sequences of covering and uncovering textiles. This creates a narrative cycle that is only completed by the viewer's movement, where time, in this oscillation between veiling and revealing, presence and absence, what is shown and what is withheld, ceases to be linear and becomes an experience.

Entry to this exhibition is free of charge. The exhibition is located in the Parque del Retiro, Palacio de Cristal.