The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting the fifth edition of Vision and Presence, the performance cycle which showcases the work of women artists. Curated by Semíramis González, it presents ten performance works throughout the year, all created specifically for the museum.

For the fifth consecutive year, the galleries, the Main Hall and other areas such as the garden will serve as a stage for these national and international creators to raise issues of social interest through performances that establish dialogues with works from the collection and invite the audience to reflect on topics such as the invisibility of women in history, femicide, colonial trauma, historical memory and wars, actively questioning how Western thought and its parameters are constructed.

Originating from Spain, Italy, Chile, Peru, Equatorial Guinea and Guatemala, the ten artists invited this year are María Vallina, M. Nieves Cáceres, Cheril Linett, Monica Mura, Kay Zevallos Villegas, Maya Saravia, Analía Beltrán i Janés, Encarnación Eyang Ndong Andeme, Mónica Cofiño and Esther Aldaz.

The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) has continued its support for the project by inviting artists from Equatorial Guinea and Guatemala through its network of cultural centres, as has The Social Hub, the artists' official accommodation. With agreements signed with other centres, such as the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno-CAAM in Gran Canaria and the LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación in Gijón, the programme also includes the participation of artists from the Canary Islands and Asturias.

Performance programme

21 January - María Vallina (Spain): Silence broken for an encounter within habitable limits

In collaboration with LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación, Gijón

The Asturian artist María Vallina proposes an action which takes its starting point from Morris Louis’s painting Pillars of Hercules in order to play with the limitations of the museum's spaces, focusing the gaze on walls and windows and on the silence of the galleries, inviting us to live, listen and experience other ways of relating to the setting. Through the use of everyday elements such as paper, wool and knitting needles she opens up a gap between these silences and spatial limitations, inhabiting their boundaries in a subversive manner. 

18 February - M. Nieves Cáceres (Spain): Drop

In collaboration with the CAAM - Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno-CAAM, Gran Canaria

Using elements such as traditional Canarian goatskin bags, the artist proposes a ritual in which she drops food for the audience to pick up, establishing a dialogue with the collection and bringing European colonial-era art closer to the bags used by indigenous communities. The performance creates a space of restoration and healing in contrast to the colonisation of the islands, transforming hunger into a vital force.

18 March - Cheril Linett (Chile): Border

Linett seeks to raise awareness and foster empathy through a performance that reflects on the suffering of others and the circulation of images of violence, questioning society's attitude and decreasing levels of sensibility. She presents bodies covered by sheets, alluding to the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Gaza. Each covered body has a line of mud painted down the middle which, when joined together, form a continuous strip representing the Gaza Strip.

29 April - Monica Mura (Italy): Cunzertu pro sonallas [Concert for Bells]

In earlier historical periods it was believed that the sounds emitted by Sardinian cowbells, forged by master blacksmiths, warded off evil spirits. With this sound installation the artist encourages reflection on rituals traditionally reserved for men; rituals that even today continue to exclude women in some cultures. Mura’s performance was selected for the El Palacio Artistic Residencies and Cultural Action programme of the Gijón City Council and received support from Acción Cultural Española and the Fundación Silos.

13 May - Kay Zevallos Villegas (Peru): Primi-tive: like a plant in the earth

The title of the performance, which is inspired by Paul Gauguin's painting Matua Mua, reinstates the original meaning of the word "primitive," related to what is primal, ancestral and alive. Through a route around the museum and making use of sound, touch and smell, the artist moves from artifice to a body covered in scales, inverting the Western gaze through Amazonian drag.

10 June - Maya Saravia (Guatemala): Night Shift

With the support of AECID - Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala

This performance features conversations with the museum's cleaning staff in which they reveal their intimate and secret relationship with the works of art. Emerging from this dialogue in the tranquility of the night is a soft melody, evoking the life the paintings regain in solitude. The performance is completed with the creation of a song for the night shift, in which invisible labour, memory and the solitary contemplation of art all resonate.

16 September - Analía Beltrán i Janés (Spain): Tissue paper

This performance stems from the artist's research based on interviews with women who worked in the agricultural sector between the 1950s and 1970s. Their experiences are presented in a poetic and performative manner through images from local and family archives together with objects used in their work, allowing for a reflection on time as a historical concept and on how some situations persist today.

21 October - Encarnación Eyang Ndong Andeme (Equatorial Guinea): My grandmother is wise 

With the support of AECID - Central Cultural de España in Bata

 This performance tells the intimate and powerful story of how grandmothers helped bring generations into the world without doctors, nurses or hospitals, using only the resources of nature and their ancestral knowledge. The work seeks to honour grandmothers and encourages the preservation of ancestral memory. 

18 November - Mónica Cofiño (Spain): Radio broadcasts from a war

In collaboration with LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón

 A ritual in which spectators makes use of radio technologies to decide what will be listened to and played, what will be said and what not, and what is true and who is lying, witnessing a manipulation of the audience. 

16 December - Esther Aldaz (Spain): Training session

In collaboration with the CAAM - Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

The starting point of this performance is the moment when a woman stands up and uses words as a kind of mantra in order to react against the abuse of power, surveillance and control exercised over women's bodies.

ACTIVITY DETAILS

Title:Vision and Presence 2026

Venue: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Performance dates: 21 January, 18 February, 18 March, 29 April, 13 May, 10 June, 16 September, 21 October, 18 November, 16 December, 2026, 6 pm, galleries of the permanent collection, Main Hall and Auditorium.

Curator: Semíramis González

Coordination: Laura Andrada

With the support of: AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation).

With the collaboration of: Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno - CAAM, Gran Canaria Island Council, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, The Social Hub and the Ellas Crean Festival.

Free entry until places are filled

More information:

https://www.museothyssen.org/en/private-area/press/dossiers/vision-and-presence-2026