Exhibition «Isabel Coixet. Collages. Learning through Disobedience»

The acclaimed film director Isabel Coixet takes an unexpected turn in her creative career with an exhibition that reveals a little-known side of her until now: that of a visual artist. As part of the PhotoEspaña 2025 festival, the museum presents a show made up of around fifty collages created by Coixet, selected by curator Estrella de Diego.

Far from being a mere parallel pastime, these collages reflect the same narrative precision that characterises her films. With paper cuttings, photographs and everyday materials, the filmmaker constructs pieces that recall the old visual layouts of great Hollywood directors. Each fragment seems intentionally placed, seeking to create a story without the need for words. For Estrella de Diego, the value of these works lies in their ability to suggest. «They do not show; they hint. They are like interrupted scenes waiting to be completed by the viewer», she explains. This approach connects directly with Coixet’s cinematic language, in which the viewer must activate their imagination to reconstruct the plot.

The collages engage not only with cinema, but also with art history. Echoes of the 20th-century avant-garde can be sensed, from Hannah Höch’s irony to Kurt Schwitters’s material rawness. But Coixet does not imitate: she works from a personal poetics, where the precariousness of the elements does not limit but enhances the message. This exhibition does not seek to fit into the traditional moulds of contemporary art. Rather, it proposes a quiet and reflective experience, where fragmented images reveal whole worlds in just a few centimetres of pasted paper. An invitation to look differently, to fill the gaps with our own questions.