Image: Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellín
‘Nos habitan pájaros y montañas’ is in its final weeks at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, where the exhibition remains on view through 9 August 2026. Curated by Marielsa Castro, the show occupies Sala A, Sala D and the museum’s central nave and brings together works by 28 artists in an installation that links the human body to land, territory and social struggle.
The exhibition opens from a body-territory perspective, presenting the body as inseparable from the land it inhabits. According to the museum, the show addresses “the indissoluble relationship between body and territory” and frames that relationship through encounters and tensions shaped by violence, liberation and resistance. The project draws on contemporary Latin American feminist movements and their insistence that struggles against violence, especially violence against territory, are bound up with broader questions of freedom and collective survival.
The title ‘Nos habitan pájaros y montañas’ is inspired by a quotation from Lygia Clark. The museum says the phrase suggests that bodies are crossed by natural, symbolic and more-than-human dimensions, where multiple beings and contradictions coexist. That idea is extended through an intergenerational dialogue between works from the MAMM collection and practices by contemporary artists from the region, with the body-territory concept treated as a site of identity, memory, reexistence and dispute.
The artist list spans several generations and practices, including Ad Minoliti, Adriana Roldán, Álvaro Barrios, Ana Mendieta, Asicaz Monzón, Beatriz González, Carlos Motta, Carolina Caycedo, Débora Arango, Eblin Grueso, Emma Reyes, Ethel Gilmour, Germán Alonso García, Hernando Tejada, Jonathas da Andrade, Juliana Góngora, Julieth Morales, Libia Posada, Luz Ángela Lizarazo, María Cristina Cortés, María Roldán, Marta Elena Vélez, Nina Squires, Óscar Muñoz, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Pablo González and Lucy Tejada Saénz. The museum describes the exhibition as one in which landscape becomes character and territory becomes body, with works evoking permeable corporalities shaped by histories, materials, violence, resistance, mysticism, desire and affection.
Inside Sala A, the presentation is organized around three conceptual axes named after works by Débora Arango: ‘Montañas’, ‘Adolescencia’ and ‘Friné’. The museum says ‘Montañas’ highlights the symbiosis between body and landscape, ‘Adolescencia’ explores sensuality as an act of reexistence and resistance to censorship, and ‘Friné’ addresses feminized bodies as a territory in dispute. These sections are expanded through pedagogical and performative components.
In Sala D, the exhibition includes ‘Escuela Feminista de Pintura’, a project by Ad Minoliti that proposes a feminist and collective rethinking of painting. The museum also notes that the installation is accompanied by themed and educational activities during the run, reinforcing the exhibition’s emphasis on participation and interpretation rather than a single static viewing experience.
The exhibition opened on 26 March 2026 and continues at the museum until 9 August. The museum is located in Medellín, Colombia, and lists visiting hours for the exhibition as Tuesday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
