The 'Pinacoteca Migrante' exhibition in Spain denounces the Eurocentrism of museums.

The Spanish Ministry of Culture inaugurated Pinacoteca Migrante , an exhibition by the Spanish-Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra , which draws on " Eurocentric museums" to invert the narrative and focus on that of indigenous peoples and their exploitation.

The exhibition is an adaptation of Gamarra's project for the Spanish Pavilion at last year's Venice Biennale , in which he critiques museums as a hegemonic Western institution.

Across six rooms, Gamarra intervenes in 18th and 19th century paintings and botanical prints to narrate history from the point of view of "migrants, both human and non-human: people, plants, and raw materials who were often forced to make the round trip."

With this project, the National Library of Spain becomes a museum , the first room of which, titled "Virgin Land," features paintings of Spanish landscapes and former colonies in Latin America, the Philippines, and North Africa, which are related to current ecocides.

This is followed by "Cabinet of Extinction," which links colonialism with extractivism by showcasing the "treasures" of European botanical expeditions during the 18th and 19th centuries. "Cabinet of Illustrated Racism" chronicles how anthropology and science were used as tools of racial discrimination.

The space titled "Mestizo Masks" delves into colonial portraiture practices that immortalize political and social norms. Each work exposes the ways in which societies accept or marginalize their subjects.

The final room, "Retable of Dying Nature," connects still life with the construction of opulence and treasure . Finally, at the center of the exhibition, simulating an open-air space, is the "Migrant Garden," inhabited by painted copies of monuments and representations of alien or invasive plants, alongside decolonial readings that accompany these guests.

The exhibition, which had a great impact at the 2024 Venice Biennale , has traveled to the National Library with an adaptation to the space, so not all the works are included, although it maintains all its essence and critical discourse.

Gamarrai intervenes in the painting 'Family Group in Front of a Landscape' by Franz Hals, which shows a Dutch family posing with an African boy, who has been identified as an orphan from Ghana brought in as a servant.

In Gamarra's version, the painting is titled "Portrait of a Child and Family in the Background," and the African child's face and hand are prominent. The work is completed with a traditional Ghanaian cloth.

But the Western hegemonic vision is not limited to the era of the empire and the Enlightenment, but persists to this day, as denounced by a display case with the traditional piggy banks with heads of Indians, Blacks or Chinese with which Domund raised funds "for the Chinese or the Africans in the 50s and 60s" of the last century , stressed the curator of the exhibition, Agustín Pérez-Rubio.

The piggy banks "are a way of hierarchizing human beings and their communities, and the artist shows them from behind so as not to perpetuate abuse ," she explained.

The exhibition can be visited until September 14 at the National Library in Madrid.