Isabel Coixet. Collages. Learning in disobedience

From 10 June to 14 September, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum will present a small format exhibition devoted to collages by the film-maker, Isabel Coixet.  This exhibition forms part of the Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA 2025 and invites visitors to immerse themselves in an intimate and narrative visual universe, created from papers, images and silence.

Curated by Estrella de Diego, the exhibition brings together a selection of around fifty collages by Isabel Coixet, one of the most personal figures of contemporary European film.  These collages, created over several years, emerge from an artistic gesture reminiscent of film storyboards, in which each image, each fragment, seems to contain a scene in progress, a story to be completed.

There is continuity between what Coixet demands from the viewer in her films and the narrative place in which her collages position visitors to the exhibition. These works connect with the great avant-garde tradition of this art form - from Hanna Höch to Kurt Schwitters - and also associate the film-maker with certain precariousness, with a way of working with little.

The exhibition offers an insight into Coixet's universe, from her aesthetic sensibility to her political outlook. Her collages are part of the great avant-garde tradition of the genre and converse with material precariousness, an aesthetic of the minimum that is aligned with her way of understanding both art and life.

Image Credit:

Isabel Coixet. Vous savez, je suis ceux qui préfèrent se taire que ne rien dire, 2015. Collage on paper. 50 x 40 cm © Courtesy of the artist